ABSTRACT
Robert Browning's return to London and his new public fame also made him a personality in London society. The study of Browning's poetry would become a collective enterprise with the founding of the London Browning Society in 1881. Henry James explored the puzzle and posited two Brownings: one to whom one talked in drawing-rooms and at table; one who withdrew out of sight to write subtle psychological and dramatic poetry. The American and Franco-Prussian Wars mobilized entire populations, became wars of attrition against the civilian populations, and were won largely by the efficient use of conscript armies and new weapons delivered to the front by networks of railways. Thoreau and Ruskin used railways as symbols of mindless and destructive technology. The poem is only a short sketch compared to the fuller, detailed portraits of personality Browning supplies in his dramatic monologues.
