e Eustace Diamonds_. Trollope was the
most industrious and systematic of modern novelists, writing a definite
amount each day, and the wide range of his characters suggests the _Human
Comedy_ of Balzac. His masterpiece is _Barchester Towers_ (1857). This is a
study of life in a cathedral town, and is remarkable for its minute
pictures of bishops and clergymen, with their families and dependents. It
would be well to read this novel in connection with _The Warden_ (1855),
_The Last Chronicle of Barset_ (1867), and other novels of the same series,
since the scenes and characters are the same in all these books, and they
are undoubtedly the best expression of the author's genius. Hawthorne says
of his novels: "They precisely suit my taste,--solid and substantial, and
... just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth
and put it under a glass case, with all the inhabitants going about their
daily business and not suspecting that they were being made a show of."

CHARLOTTE BRONTe. We have another suggestion of Thackeray in the work of
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855). She aimed to make her novels a realistic
picture of society, but she added to Thackeray's realism the element of
passionate and somewhat unbalanced romanticism. The latter element was
partly the expression of Miss Bronte's own nature, and partly the result of
her lonely and grief-stricken life, which was darkened by a succession of
family tragedies. It will help us to understand her work if we remember
that both Charlotte Bronte and her sister Emily[242] turned to literature
because they found their work as governess and teacher unendurable, and
sought to relieve the loneliness and sadness of their own lot by creating a
new world of the imagination. In this new world, however, the sadness of
the old remains, and all the Bronte novels have behind them an aching
heart. Charlotte Bronte's best known work is _Jane Eyre_ (1847), which,
with all its faults, is a powerful and fascinating study of elemental love
and hate, reminding us vaguely of one of Marlowe's tragedies. This work won
instant favor with the public, and the author was placed in the front rank
of living novelists. Aside from its value as a novel, it is interesting, in
many of its early passages, as the reflection of the author's own life and
experience. _Shirley_ (1849) and _Villette_ (1853) make up the trio of
novels by which this gifted woman is generally remembered.

BULWER LYTTON. E