human
Mark him, Austin: that's true love! Ours must begin again. In Tresham Browning seems to have designed to portray the finest type of ancestral pride. He is
gpt
of his
human
because the men were all
gpt
and the women all of flawless honour; and he has the chivalrous tenderness of ideal knighthood, as well as its honourable pride. When Mertoun has received his death-stroke and told his story, the tenderness comes out; the sullied image of his passionately loved sister not only recovers its appeal, but rises up before him in mute intolerable reproach; and Mildred has scarcely breathed her last in his arms when Tresham succumbs to the poison he has taken in remorse for his hasty act. It is unlucky that this tragic climax, finely conceived as it is, is marred by the unconscious burlesque of his
human
Ah,--I had forgotten: I am dying.
gpt
of the courtiers like the
human
of children at play. Nevertheless, the victory of love over political interest which the motto foreshadows is not accomplished without those subtle fluctuations and surprises which habitually mark the conduct of Browning's plots. The alternative issues gain in seriousness and ideality as we proceed, and Browning has nowhere expressed the ideal of sovereignty more finely than it is expressed in this play, by the man for whose sake a sovereign is about to surrender her crown.[20] Colombe herself is one of Browning's most gracious and winning figures. She brings the ripe decision of womanhood to bear upon a series of difficult situations without losing the bright glamour of her youth. Her inborn truth and nature draw her on as by a quiet momentum, and gradually liberate her from the sway of the hollow fictions among which her lot is cast. Valence, the outward instrument of this liberation, is not the least noble of that line of chivalrous lovers which reaches from Gismond to Caponsacchi. With great delicacy the steps are marked in this inward and spiritual
gpt
of Colombe. Valence's
human
is to make her realise the glory and privileges of the rulership which places her beyond his reach, at the very moment when she is about to resign it in despair. She discovers the needs of the woman and the possibilities of power at the same time, and thus is brought, by Valence's means, to a mood in which Prince Berthold's offer of his hand and crown together weighs formidably, for a moment, against Valence's offer of his love alone, until she discovers that Berthold is the very personation, in love and in statecraft alike, of the fictions from which she had escaped. Then, swiftly recovering herself, she sets foot finally on the firm ground where she had first sought her