_Tancred_ completed the trilogy in 1847. The hero is the sheltered great-grandson of the Duke of Bellamont, who “might almost be placed at the head of the English nobility.” The introspective Tancred is preoccupied with religion and the direction it can give to human affairs particularly in the areas of politics and government. Unable to find the answers to his questions in England and unwilling to enter Commons until he has them, he makes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At this point the novel dissolves into a panorama of kidnapings, desert intrigues, and mountain kingdoms reminiscent of Rudolph Valentino movies. Tancred becomes absorbed with “the great Asian mystery” which is to assist in the moral regeneration of the West, particularly England. Overwhelmed by Emirs and Sheikhs, Turks and Druses, the novel is the weakest of the three. But together the books are a prime example of an art form carefully selected and used to gain a hearing for a political program. =Henry James: The Breakup of Victorian Tranquillity= _The Princess Casamassima_, published by Henry James in 1886, is one of the novels which focused upon the revolutionary currents beginning to stir beneath the surface of English political life. Irving Howe has called it a warning that something had to be done to alleviate the misery of the poor. These conditions had given rise to radical groups such as that which met at the Sun and Moon Tavern under the leadership of Paul Muniment. The personal tragedy of his friend Hyacinth Robinson forms the novel’s central theme. The sensitive, disinherited inhabitant of two worlds, Robinson is the illegitimate son of a Frenchwoman who had murdered her titled lover. Robinson’s maternal grandfather had fallen on the barricades of the French Revolution. Raised with the help of Eustache Poupin, exiled veteran of the French Commune, Robinson feels that he is heir to a revolutionary background. Emotionally exalted, he declares his willingness for self-sacrifice at a group meeting. From that time on, like the protagonist of _The Beast in the Jungle_, Robinson waits for the summons to fulfill his destiny. But meanwhile he falls under the spell of the Princess, who takes a dilettante interest in the lives of the poor and the activities of the radical movement. Partly under her influence and partly as a result of a trip to Venice and Paris made possible by a small legacy, Robinson finds his revolutionary ardor waning. In his admiration for the richness of European civilization, he becomes reluctant to act as an agent of its eventual destruction. When the summons comes for him to assassinate a duke, he shoots himself instead. James presents a gallery of types: the guilty aristocrat, a member of the decayed gentility, the professional revolutionary, and the industrious poor. In this novel James is concerned as always with personal relationships, backgrounds, and motivations. He also presents an environment out of which political violence can explode.