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Dumbello's letter to her mother about the Palliser affair, her candid communication to her husband, who is so delighted with her that he buys her a ponderous necklace of emeralds on the spot; her visit to the Duke of Omnium, are all exquisite feats of wit and wisdom, illustrative of the perfection to which the education of a clergyman's daughter in the ways of this world may be brought.

Mr. Thackeray might have painted the picture, but he would then have done showman to it, and moralised over it. Mr. Trollope lets it pass in the crowd on his walls; he leaves it to point its own moral; a mode of satire most perfidious and effectual. Cynicism, raillery, and gibing, are not among the tool she works with, which are, nevertheless, sharp-edged. If there were anything unkindly or spiteful in the tone of his clerical stories, we should be less impressed by his portraiture of the exemplary clergymen who believe that it is not only possible but quite easy to serve two masters, of whom one is God, and the other is Mammon, provided you act in a gentlemanly way, and keep clear of dissenters. He rarely goes deep into any character, and the seesaw condition of mind which he is so fond of depicting, usually has reference to external circumstances. It is not the balancing of moral, intellectual, or spiritual problems, such as George Eliot gives us. The most complicated struggle, the most ably depicted situation of below-the-surface doubt and difficulty, are to be found in the history of Mr. Crawley, begun in "Framley Parsonage," and concluded in the "Last Chronicle of Barsetshire." The pride and poverty of the man, his reticent but strong love and pity for his toiling weary wife, the touch of elevation in his nature which parts him from the rest,-these make Mr. Crawley interesting, before we come to the faithful and powerful description of his bewildered struggle, when suspicion of a ruinous and galling nature gathers over him; when even his friends doubt, and his family are sick at heart. The rarity of pathos in Mr. Trollope's writings makes it the more welcome when it comes, and it always rings true, being perfectly simple. The meeting of Mr. Crawley and his wife, when the mystery of the cheque is cleared up, and the death of Mr. Harding, in "The Last Chronicle," the confession of Lady Mason to Sir Peregrine Orme, in "Orley Farm," the old man's love for her, and the description of her conduct after the trial; a delineation of a woman, who has been suddenly tempted into one sin, but whose character has not suffered deterioration, brought out of mere remorse into repentance, offer instances of this fine quality of true pathos. In one In one case where we might have looked for it, it is wanting. "He knew he was Right," one of Mr. Trollope's later novels, of the social class, is an

essay in a new direction, and, as concerns the main interest of the story it is, in our opinion, a failure. The hero, Louis Trevelyan, goes mad, in a subtle, tangled, sullen way, which demands, for its just handling, strength of a kind different from Mr. Trollope's, and delicacy other than his adroit finesse and circumspection. The bareness of truth is a mistake in this case. Mr. Trollope does not adorn the man with qualities to inspire interest before his calamity overtakes him, and so he fails to evoke compassion after it has done so. Nobody can care whether Louis Trevelyan is mad or sane, for he is an ill-tempered snob from the beginning, and his wife is detestable. It is not more possible to pity her than to pity her husband, and this is the more provoking because Mr. Trollope expects us to pity her, and his grateful readers would like to do what he expects. The book abounds in humour; it contains one of the cleverest episodes among the author's innumerable stories of cross-purpose; the American girls are as real as the Dales, and much more charming, though Mr. Trollope has no notion that such is the case. Hugh Stanbury is one of his best characters; Bozzle is, we feel certain, the only true detective who has ever been drawn in a novel. Miss Stanbury is a match for Miss Betsy Trotwood. All the accessories to the story are perfect, but the madman and his wife spoil it all. There is not one touch of the pathetic in this narrative, though it might have been raised to the height of tragedy, and though it is difficult to conceive how the author has contrived to keep it throughout below pathos.

When we contemplate the long line of Mr. Trollope's social novels, we find that he has more than one specialty in portraitpainting. His lawyers, not so numerous as his clergymen, are as distinct and as memorable. Mr. Furnival, Mr. Round, Mr. Mortimer Gazebee, Mr. Theodore Burton, and Sir Thomas Underwood, are quite as admirable in their way as the Barchester people, and as the casual curates whom we find in the not actually clerical novels. The sporting men, the money-lenders, the election-agents, too, every one of them will bear inspection; though in many instances the author The "Old Man proceeds on the development principle. of the Sea," who persecutes poor Charley Tudor, one of the "Three Clerks," is the lowest form of the devourer who gets hold of Phineas Finn, and who hopes Mr. Burgo Fitzgerald We find him in different stages "will be punctual." of his evolution in several of these novels, always the same plausible, relentless rogue, but with little touches of differentiation exquisitely humorous-as, for instance, when he eats Mr. Trollope develops in many Phineas Finn's breakfast. other cases also. Charley Tudor's entanglement with t

barmaid, who gets a written promise of marriage out of him, is the crude form of that delightfully humorous episode in the history of Johnny Eames, in which he eludes the pursuit of Amelia Roper, which is, in its turn, a rough sketch for the finely-finished skirmishing that ends in the defeat of Madeline Demolines, who is perhaps the most perfect specimen in the author's collection of flirts. Lady Eustace is a more unprincipled and less refined Lady Ongar, and the cousiulover affair in "The Eustace Diamonds," is the same as the cousin-lover affair in "The Claverings," Lucy Morris playing to a nicety the part of Florence. With just confidence in his own powers of varying the sauce and the seasoning Mr. Trollope places similar dishes before us in rapid, unfailing succession, like the pilau and rice of an Eastern feast, or the legs of lamb and spinach of Charles Lamb's famous dinner. We eat them constantly with a tranquil pleasure, not demanding more variety in the flavouring than he gives us, never elated, and never disappointed; without eager appetite, but equally without satiety. We feel, on opening a new book by Mr. Trollope, as soon as we get a glimpse of the story, that we are well acquainted with it; but knowledge no more interferes with our enjoyment than familiarity with the music of an opera injures the pleasure with which we listen to its execution. The series of love stories which began with Adela Gauntlet and Arthur Wilkinson as the model couple, fond but prudent, faithful but calculating, and Caroline Waddington and George Bertram as the terrible example, because they were too prudent, and overdid the calculation, has presented very little alteration in outline ever since. Lucy Morris is suffering at this moment the selfsame agonies as those through which Florence Burton passed safely in 1866; and Clara Belton might have compared notes with Miss Mackenzie, and called Rachel Ray into a three-cornered confidence about "the young man from the brewery," a year or two earlier. We do not doubt that Mr. Trollope has a plentiful supply of cousins in reserve, developments of George Vavasour and George Hotspur, of "Lizzie's" Frank, and of "Julia's" Harry; and that we shall take much delight in their difficulties, their debts, their doubts, and their flirtations; shall listen to their small talk, and read their tepid love-letters, until they or we cease to be. The young men in official situations, of aspiring minds and modern manners, with vices just hinted at, but guiltless of enthusiasm, cool, self-possessed, and selfish, will always be in readiness to "like" the sweet girls, and make up and unmake their minds as to marrying them; and every sweet girl will always have two lovers apiece, one of whom she wants to marry, and one who wants to marry

her. The latter delightfully difficult situation will be infinitely varied, and so we shall go on, no more resenting the sameness than we resent the monotony of hot rolls at breakfast.

While Mr. Trollope is free from the faults of many novelists who undertake to depict "high life,"-while he does not descend to the ludicrous vulgarities of "Lothair," or stuff his books with coroneted millinery and upholstery, like the lady novelists, but makes his lords and ladies real persons, exactly like life, and, when needs be, quite as contemptible, we do think he does injustice to the world in general, àpropos of these lords and ladies. There is such a thing as the cant of satire; and it is enticing, because facile. Mr. Thackeray was a great proficient in it. He scattered it about with the lavishness of a tract distributor; and its favourite formulas were those which declared toadyism and tuft-hunting to be universal. His typical snob is the man who, with a week-kneed abjectness, dearly loves a lord. Of course, such a man is a snob; but we think he is likewise a rare specimen of the order of mean creatures, and that snobbism may exist at the other extreme, in the man, to wit, who hates a lord because he is a lord,—the man who troubles himself in any way about the rank of people with whom he is not personally concerned. Mr. Trollope is infected by this easy kind of cant, and injures some of his very best effects by its admission. When Mary Thorne, on intimate terms with the Misses Gresham, meets their cousins, the Ladies De Courcy, for the first time, she expects to be snubbed by them; and the Ladies De Courcy snub the young lady whom they meet as a visitor in their aunt's house, as a matter of course. Alice Vavasor, whose own near relatives are people of title, keeps aloof from them because they are so, and Mr. Trollope praises her for it; whereas, it seems to us that the deprecatory, peevish, uneasy suspicion which is perpetually conscious of social inferiority, and perpetually imputing vulgar arrogance to persons of rank, is a very unworthy sentiment, and much more humiliating than any exterior offence could be. If people with titles were to be constantly thinking of them, constantly enjoying the idea that they can humble and spite, insult, domineer over, or buy their untitled fellow creatures in virtue of them, titles would cease to be harmless distinctions, and become a moral plague. If people without titles were to be always envious, suspicious, embarrassed, false, flattering, or self-depreciatory in the presence of people who do possess them; or if, on the other hand, they were persistently to refuse respect to respectable persons because they are ranged in a different order of nomenclature from their own, untitled people would establish the cynical theory that snobbism is the prevailing

feature of middle-class English society. We do not greatly overstate our case against Mr. Trollope when we say that he does establish some such division on the general scale in his books. His special, avowed favourite, Lily Dale, who is not ours, for she is pert, and in this particular respect, vulgar, is not only touched with this cant of satire upon rank, but she is, like her mother and sister, wrong upon the point of the fitting estimate of money also. When Lily Dale "chaffs" Adolphus Crosbie about the grandeur of De Courcy Castle, and talks about their own comparative insignificance, as she knows nothing about the De Courcys, as she has not the reader's opportunities of learning that they are a despicable family, she does an ill-bred thing; and when she resists her uncle's kindness because he is rich and she is poor, she does, not a noble, but an ignoble thing. "The Small House at Allington" is considered by many of his readers to be Mr. Trollope's very best book. We do not hold it in such high esteem, though it contains some of his very best writing, and its humour is unsurpassed. Lord de Guest's adventure with Lambkin is enough to make the book memorable, especially that supreme touch, where the earl directs the butler to send "two or three men" to bring in Johnny Eames's hat; and, in reply to the man's wondering "two or three men, my lord"? says testily, "somebody's been teasing the bull." The whole story of Adolphus Crosbie is admirable. The episode of the weddingday, and the brief, well-merited, blank failure of the married life of the pair; the scenes at Mrs. Roper's boarding-house; the mental struggles of Cradell between his fear of Lupex and his ambition to be regarded as a gallant, gay Lothario, dangerous to domestic peace-struggles which resemble those of Mr. Winkle when he ran away from Mr. Dowling just as Mr. Dowling was running away from him ;-the office life, in which Johnny Eames distinguishes himself, are all full of the wise, pleasant, knowing humour peculiar to the author. We are disposed to rank "Doctor Thorne" higher than "The Small House." The story of the Scatcherds, father and son, is an abler achievement than anything in the history of the Dales, and Miss Dunstable's rejection of Frank Gresham is Mr. Trollope's masterpiece in one of his principal lines. It is worth remarking how effective this great novelist can be without the aid of picturesqueness. From external nature he very rarely asks assistance. He looks at it with the eye of a sportsman, or a farmer, and he uses it in that sense to illustrate character, taking his sporting men across country, and his farming men, Lord de Guest, or Lucius Mason, round the fields and farmyards; but he sets no pictures of sentiment or passion in a framework of beautiful Nature. The most

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