about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were
instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge,
however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London _Critic_, who
writes as follows:
'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent
arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once--Mr.
Trollope, we presume, not excluded--albeit he is rather sarcastic
upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it.
'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It
was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to
knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton
than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities
on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of
argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the
pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr.
Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much
sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair
Bostonian than from _his_.'
After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart
to assail Mr. Trollope?
Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the
reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as
those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that
must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are
gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who
constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the
army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that
of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book
will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and
therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken
opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country
as a _bonne bouche_ which they rarely obtain from so respectable a
source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which
we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed
than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have
received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so
fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel
conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up
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