least about the characters of the tale, and in their absence we feel a void exactly proportionate to the interest previously excited. Take, for instance, the case of Lady Mason: nothing could be more exciting than the position assigned to her. She is beautiful, engaging, refined; an old country gentleman of high standing is her accepted lover, and she has just confessed to him that she has for twenty years been living on the proceeds of perjury and forgery, for which she is about, in a few weeks, to be brought into a court of justice. Sir Peregrine Orme, who was to have been her husband, sees of course the impossibility of his marriage; and Mrs. Orme, his widow daughter, and Lady Mason's confidential friend, proceeds to offer advice, consolation, and forgiveness. "Many," says Mr. Trollope, "will think that she was wrong to do so, and I fear it must be acknowledged that she was not strong-minded. By forgiving her, I do not mean that she pronounced absolution for the sin of past years, or that she endeavoured to make the sinner think that she was no worse for her sin. Mrs. Orme was a good churchwoman, but not strong individually in points of doctrine. All that she left mainly to the woman's conscience and her own dealings with her Saviour, merely saying a word of salutary counsel as to a certain spiritual pastor who might be of aid. But Mrs. Orme forgave her as regarded herself."

This seems to us about the most feeble way of getting through a striking scene that it is possible to conceive, and the suggestion of calling in the clergyman puts the finishing touch to the "mildness" of the whole. Contrast it, for instance, with the description of Miriam and Donatello, in Transformation, after the commission of the murder, or with that of the heroine of the Scarlet Letter after the discovery of her guilt. It is mere trifling to slur the scene over with hack religious phrases, to send for the parson just as one would for the parish engine, and calmly to pretermit the exact tragical dénouement to which the whole story has been leading up. Later on in the book we have a glimpse of the sort of consolation which, we suppose, the "certain spiritual pastor" administered on his arrival. "No lesson," the author more than once informs us, "is truer than that which teaches us that God does temper the wind to the shorn lamb." A shorn lamb! and this of a woman whose whole life has been one long lie, whose every act has been studied for a hypocritical purpose, and who is driven to reluctant confession at last, not from any sudden conviction of guilt, not because she finds the burden of her solitary crime becoming absolutely intolerable, not because in an agony of fatigue and remorse she tears off the mask she has worn with such suffering endurance, -but because she is not wretch enough to incur the infamy of

D

involving a noble old man in the disgrace and ruin which she knows, and which other people know, is shortly about to break upon herself.

There are, no doubt, people going about the world with secrets locked up in their hearts, to the safe custody of which, as of some ferocious wild beast, their whole existence is devoted. The Spartan lad with the hidden fox gnawing his flesh is probably no exaggeration of the agonies they endure, and the heroic self-restraint which concealment necessitates. "Let the great gods," cries Lear in the thunder-storm,

"Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipped of justice: Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue,
That art incestuous: Caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming

Hast practised on man's life!"

The tragedy of such careers is a dark one, and the artist who essays to paint it must be prepared with a courageous hand, intense colouring, and shades and lights in more striking contrast than are to be found in the mere conventional routine of ordinary society. Hypocrisy is a painful trade, and must make itself felt over an entire character, where once its employment has become essential. Lady Mason, after twenty years of it, would have been something very different from the calm, handsome, well-dressed, but impressible and half-coquettish woman to whom Mr. Trollope introduces us. Her experience would have put her beyond the reach of such gentle ministrations as Mrs. Orme's, and would have made it impossible for her in the crisis of her fate to behave like a silly impressible school-girl. Imposture "should be made of sterner stuff," and the sternness should be evidenced by a resolution, a courage, prepared nerves, a daring spirit, a readiness to run risk and encounter disaster, such as we find no trace of in Mr. Trollope's creation. Repentance, when it comes, must be the result of something more than accident, and remorse, if it is to be real, must require deeper comfort than little bits of texts, pet curates, and pretty proverbs.

How tragical does such a position become in the hands of a really pathetic writer! Who has not almost shuddered at Hood's description of the utter isolation, the nervous watchfulness, the growing horror of the secret criminal living alone amid the crowd of innocent school-boys?—

"Peace went with them one and all,
And each calm pillow spread;
But Guilt was my grim chamberlain
That lighted me to bed,

And drew my midnight curtains round
With fingers bloody red."

Eugene Aram lives in one's thoughts as a reality; Lady Mason fades into indistinctness as soon as Mr. Millais's pretty sketches of a graceful sentimental woman, always bien mise and always in an appropriate attitude, have ceased to enlist our sympathies or arouse our curiosity.

But if Mr. Trollope's position in the artistic world is not very high, it is to this very circumstance that he probably owes much of his reputation. He travels with great agility, it is true, but never in a region where the million readers of The Cornhill find the least difficulty in following him. He paints life in its easy, superficial, intelligible aspects. Felix Graham and Lucius Mason, who are intended to be originals, deviate in no essential quality from the ten thousand other young men who might with equal propriety have been introduced to fill their place. Lucius is on the whole a greater fool than Graham, and being less of a gentleman, lets his folly escape in more disagreeable ways; but neither of them suggests any real rebellion against the actual constitution of society, the theories by which life is shaped, and the maxims which the majority at once obey for themselves and inflict upon others. The whole picture is full of sunshine; the tragedy of life, of which every man is conscious in his graver moments, and which at some particular crisis absorbs his thoughts, the grave doubts, the painful struggles, the miserable anxieties, the humiliating defeats, all that makes the world something else than a mere playground for children or a bed of roses for idlers,-find no place in the cheerful, sanguine, well-to-do philosophy which feeds the perennial font of Mr. Trollope's fictions. "Si vis me flere," says the Roman instructor in the art of influencing others, "dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi." People like Charlotte Brontë speak out of the fulness of their heart, when they depict the sufferings of our existence, and they infect us with sympathy for vicissitudes, disappointments, or regrets, with which each of us has something in common. They go nearer the truth, and they teach us a worthier lesson than he whom a good-natured superficiality and a perilous influx of success prevent from looking into the gloomy caverns which surround him, from visiting the chamber where he, like his neighbours, has a skeleton on guard, and from indulging in the aspirations to which suffering flies for refuge, and which alone saves the miserable from despair.

A world of Lady Staveleys would be, after all, a poor concern, and angels like Madeline would be the inhabitants of a duller heaven than even that which conventional theology has depicted as the future residence of the blest. Contentment is a noble achievement, but it must not be the content of a mere material well-being, of shallow thought, of slight insight, of

narrow scope. It is to this sort of mood that Mr. Trollope's stories are calculated to minister; and by fostering it, they perhaps do as much towards lowering the dignity, enfeebling the energies, and coarsening the prevailing taste of the times, as if they in any tangible particular violated the conventional standard of decorum. The mass of second-rate people is preserved from corruption only by a leaven of genius, and the world goes its way in peace only because a few men here and there are sensitive enough to appreciate its catastrophes, and bold enough to infringe its rules, question its methods, and attack its abuses. Without them we should degenerate into that Lilliputian congeries of petty interests, timid thoughts, and unworthy ambitions, which Béranger, with a gloomy mirth, depicted as the approaching condition of his countrymen:

"Combien d'imperceptibles êtres !
De petits jésuites bilieux !

De milliers d'autres petits prêtres
Qui portent de petits bons dieux !
Béni par eux tout dégénére,
Par eux la plus vieille des cours
N'est plus qu'un petit séminaire :
Mais les barbons regnent toujours!

Tout est petit,-palais, usines,
Science, commerce, beaux arts,-
De bonnes petites famines
Désolent de petits remparts;
Sur la frontière mal fermée
Marche, au bruit de petits tambours,
Une pauvre petite armée :

Mais les barbons regnent toujours!"

Some such danger seems to us, we confess, to impend over a generation for which such contrivances as The Cornhill secure an infinity of "Orley Farms," and which seduces an artist like Mr. Millais from his legitimate occupations to draw little commonplace sketches of commonplace life, with be-crinolined young ladies fresh from the pages of Le Follet, and incidents whose trivialities his pencil alone could rescue from being absolutely vulgar.

When we have said, however, that Mr. Trollope is incapable of conceiving a tragedy, or of doing justice to it when circumstances bring it in his way, we have well nigh exhausted the complaints that need be brought against him. It is a more agreeable task to touch upon the many excellent qualities which have concurred in recommending him to the good will of his countrymen. His pages are unsullied by a single touch of malice, unkindness, or revenge. His amusing sketch in The Warden of three bishops, given as a burlesque account of

the three sons of the archdeacon, proves that he could, if he
pleased, be personal to the greatest effect; and every author
must have little spites and dislikes of his own, which only a
resolute good feeling can prevent from intruding upon his can-
vas. Mr. Trollope never sins in this respect, and his im-
munity from this failing might well be accepted as an apology
for a host of minor delinquencies. Another great charm is,
that the author is for the most part kept well out of sight, and
if he appears, shows himself thoroughly interested in the piece,
and sincerely desirous that his audience should be so likewise.
Mr. Thackeray's curious taste for careless, rambling, "round-
about" writing, and the clever knack he has of making the
most of "an infinite deal of nothing," has set the fashion to a
host of imitators, who do not scruple to stop at every con-
venient point of their narration to indulge in a few personal
confidences, and enunciate their views about their story, them-
selves, or the world in general. Mr. Thackeray, in particular,
loses no opportunity of, so to speak, yawning in public; saying
how dreadfully tiresome his novels are to him, how he falls
asleep over them at the club, and strongly recommends his
friends to do the same. Mr. Trollope has no touch of this
affectation; he does his very best: he believes in the piece, he
detests the villains, admires the heroes, and can scarcely refrain
from caressing his pet heroine when she crosses his path. If he
comes for a few moments on the stage, it is only to bustle
about, to adjust the ropes, to hurry the scene-shifters, and to
assure the beholders that no pains are being spared for their
entertainment. Mr. Thackeray, on the contrary, lolls in dressed
in a dressing-gown and slippers, stretches his arms, cries, "Eheu!
fugaces,-monsieur, mon cher confrère;" and acknowledges
that he has often done vilely before, but never so vilely as on
the present occasion.

Mr. Trollope does not, however, invariably preserve the wholesome rule of impersonality. Though a thorough optimist, and believing in his heart that the world is the best of all possible worlds, he has one or two little grievances which keep us just short of absolute perfection. With characteristic carelessness and high spirits, he points out the tiny flaw which he has discovered, and adds a scarcely serious murmur to the general chorus of complaint. One of his troubles, for instance, is, that there should be such wicked people as lawyers in the world, and he grows quite sentimental over the circumstance that gentlemen should put off their consciences when they put on their wigs, and consent, for the small remuneration of one guinea, to make the worse appear the better cause. In support of his views, he has constructed an elaborate trial scene, with a proper appa