l of the third quarter of the century--in a more than
average but not of an extraordinary, transcendental, or quintessential
condition--Anthony Trollope is about as good a representative as can be
found. His talent is individual enough, but not too individual: system
and writer may each have the credit due to them allotted without
difficulty.

[26] His most ambitious studies in strict _character_ are the
closely connected heroines of _The Bertrams_ (1859) and _Can you
Forgive Her?_ (1864-1865). But the first-named book has never
been popular; and the other hardly owes its popularity to the
heroine.

A novelist who might have been in front of the first flight of these in
point of time, and who is actually put by some in the first flight in
point of merit, is Mrs. Gaskell. Born in 1810, she accumulated the
material for her future _Cranford_ at Knutsford in Cheshire: but did not
publish this till after Dickens had, in 1850, established _Household
Words_, where it appeared in instalments. She had a little earlier, in
1848, published her first novel, _Mary Barton_--a vivid but distinctly
one-sided picture of factory life in Lancashire. In the same year with
the collected _Cranford_ (1853) appeared _Ruth_, also a "strife-novel"
(as the Germans would say) though in a different way: and two years
later what is perhaps her most elaborate effort, _North and South_. A
year or two before her death in 1865 _Sylvia's Lovers_ was warmly
welcomed by some: and the unfinished _Wives and Daughters_, which was
actually interrupted by that death, has been considered her maturest
work. Her famous and much controverted _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ does
not belong to us, except in so far as it knits the two novelists
together.

From hints dropped already, it may be seen that the present writer does
not find Mrs. Gaskell his easiest subject. There is much in her work
which, in Hobbes's phrase, is both "an effect of power and a cause of
pleasure": but there appears to some to be in her a pervading want of
actual success--of _reussite_--absolute and unquestionable. The sketches
of _Cranford_ are very agreeable and very admirable performances in the
manner first definitely thrown out by Addison, and turned to consummate
perfection in the way of the regular novel (which be it remembered
_Cranford_ is not) by Miss Austen. But the mere mention of the last
name kills them. The author of _Emma_ would have treated Miss Matty and
th