only humouring the caprice of a dying man. "_I have no friend in the
wide world_ is the old King's cry. Give me what I have no power to take
from you."

"So few years give it quietly,
My son! It will drop from me. See you not?
A crown's unlike a sword to give away--
That, let a strong hand to a weak hand give!
But crowns should slip from palsied brows to heads
Young as this head:...." (vol. iii. p. 162-3.)

Charles places the crown on his father's head. A strange conflict of
gratified ambition, of remorseful tenderness, of dreamy regret, stirs
the failing spirit. But command and defiance flash out in the old King's
last words.

This death on the stage is the only point on which Mr. Browning diverges
from historical truth. King Victor lived a year longer, in a modified
captivity to which his son had most unwillingly consigned him; and he is
made to suggest this story in the half-insanity of his last moments as
one which may be told to the world; and will give his son the appearance
of reigning, while he remains, in secret, King.


"THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES" is a tragedy in five acts, fictitious in
plot, but historical in character. The Druses of Lebanon are a compound
of several warlike Eastern tribes, owing their religious system to a
caliph of Egypt, Hakeem Biamr Allah; and probably their name to his
confessor Darazi, who first attempted to promulgate his doctrine among
them; some also impute to the Druse nation a dash of the blood of the