at
depicting, not so much characters as scenes. His pictures are real, _on
the whole_. Their reality, we take it, is owing to the happy balance of
the writer's judgment and his invention. Had his invention been a little
more tinged with fancy, it is probable that he would have known certain
temptations of which he appears to be ignorant. Even should he have
successfully resisted them, the struggle, the contest, the necessity of
choice would have robbed his manner of that easy self-sufficiency which
is one of its greatest charms. Had he succumbed, he would often have
fallen away from sober fidelity to Nature. As the matter stands, his
great felicity is that he never goes beyond his depth,--and this, not so
much from fear, as from ignorance. His insight is anything but profound.
He has no suspicion of deeper waters. Through the whole course of the
present story, he never attempts to fathom Crosbie's feelings, to
retrace his motives, to refine upon his character. Mr. Trollope has
learned much in what is called the realist school; but he has not taken
lessons in psychology. Even while looking into Crosbie's heart, we never
lose sight of Courcy Castle, of his Club, of his London life; we cross
the threshold of his inner being, we knock at the door of his soul, but
we remain within call of Lily Dale and the Lady Alexandrina. We never
see Crosbie the man, but always Crosbie the gentleman, the Government
clerk. We feel at times as if we had a right to know him better,--to
know him at least as well as he knew himself. It is significant of Mr.
Trollope's temperament--a temperament, as it seems to us, eminently
English--that he can have told such a story with so little preoccupation
with certain spiritual questions. It is evident that this spiritual
reticence, if we may so term it, is not a _parti pris_; for no fixed
principle, save perhaps the one hinted at above, is apparent in the
book. It belongs to a species of single-sightedness, by which Mr.
Trollope, in common with his countrymen, is largely characterized,--an
indifference to secondary considerations, an abstinence from sidelong
glances. It is akin to an intense literalness of perception, of which we
might find an example on every page Mr. Trollope has written. He is
conscious of seeing the surface of things so clearly, perhaps, that he
deems himself exempt from all profounder obligations. To describe
accurately what he sees is a point of conscience with him. In these
matt