when the Squire, coming down to the Small House to discuss his niece's
marriage, just avoids a quarrel with his sister about the propriety of
early fires, we acknowledge, that, as it stands, the trait belongs to
Trollope alone. Dickens would have eschewed it, and Thackeray would have
expanded it. The same remark applies to their pathos. With Trollope we
weep, if it so happen we can, for a given shame or wrong. Our sympathy
in the work before us is for the jilted Lily Dale, our indignation for
her false lover. But our compassion for Amelia Osborne and Colonel
Newcome goes to the whole race of the oppressed.

Mr. Trollope's greatest value we take to be that he is so purely a
novelist. The chief requisite for writing a novel in the present age
seems to be that the writer should be everything else. It implies that
the story-telling gift is very well in its way, but that the inner
substance of a tale must repose on some direct professional experience.
This fashion is of very recent date. Formerly the novelist had no
personality; he was a simple chronicler; his accidental stand-point was
as impertinent as the painter's attitude before his canvas. But now the
main question lies in the pose, not of the model, but of the artist. It
will fare ill with the second-rate writer of fiction, unless he can give
conclusive proof that he is well qualified in certain practical
functions. And the public is very vigilant on this point. It has become
wonderfully acute in discriminating true and false lore. The critic's
office is gradually reduced to a search for inaccuracies. We do not stop
to weigh these truths; we merely indicate them. But we confess, that, if
Mr. Trollope is somewhat dear to us, it is because they are not true of
him. The central purpose of a work of fiction is assuredly the portrayal
of human passions. To this principle Mr. Trollope steadfastly
adheres,--how consciously, how wilfully, we know not,--but with a
constancy which is almost a proof of conviction, and a degree of success
which lends great force to his example. The interest of the work before
us is emphatically a _moral_ interest: it is a story of feeling, the
narrative of certain feelings.

Mr. Troliope's tales give us a very sound sense of their reality. It may
seem paradoxical to attribute this to the narrowness of the author's
imagination; but we cannot help doing so. On reflection, we shall see
that it is not so much persons as events that Mr. Trollope aims