The nations of the West--and, before all others, the Italian race--are those of a subtly developed intelligence.

The worldly art of a Church-man, ingenuities of theology having aided in refining ingenuities of worldliness, is perhaps the finest exemplar of unalloyed western brain-craft.

But Italy is also a land of passion; and therefore at once, for its ardours of the heart--seen not in love alone but in carven capital and on frescoed wall--and for its casuistries of intellect, Browning looks to Italy for the material best fitted to his artistry.
Between that group of personages whom we may call his characters of passion and that group made up of his characters of intelligence, lie certain figures of peculiar interest, by birth and inheritance children of the East, and by culture partakers, in a greater or a less degree, of the characteristics of the West--a Djabal, with his Oriental heart entangled by Prankish tricks of sophistry; a Luria, whose Moorish passion is enthralled by the fascination of Florentine intellect, and who can make a return upon himself with a half-painful western self-consciousness.
Loyalties, devotions, to a person, to a cause, to an ideal, and the sacrifice of individual advantages, worldly prosperity, temporal successes to these--such, stated in a broad and general way, is the theme of special interest to Browning in his dramas.

These loyalties may be well and wisely fixed, or they may contain a portion of error and illusion.

But in either case they furnish a test of manly and womanly virtue.