ed, and true to nature.

The episcopal and capitular group of ecclesiastics round the Cathedral
of Barchester is Trollope's main creation, and is destined to endure
for some time. It is all in its way inimitably true and subtly
graduated from bishop to dean, from dean to canon, and so on through
the whole chapter down to the verger and the porter. The relations of
these dignitaries to each other, the relation of their woman-kind to
each other, the relation of the clerical world to the town world and to
the county world, their conventional etiquette, their jealousies, their
feuds, their scandals, and their entertainments, are all marked with
admirable truth and a refined touch. The relation of the village
respectabilities to the county families, the relation of the county
families to the great ducal magnate, are all given with curious
precision and subtle discrimination. When _The Warden_ appeared just
forty years ago, I happened to be a pupil in the chambers of the late
Sir Henry Maine, then a famous critic of the _Saturday Review_; and I
well remember his interest and delight in welcoming a new writer, from
whom he thought so much might be expected. The relations of London
"Society" to the parliamentary and ministerial world as described in
Trollope's later books are all treated with entire mastery. It is this
thorough knowledge of the organism of English society which specially
distinguishes Trollope. It is a quality in which Thackeray alone is
his equal; and Thackeray himself has drawn no complex social organism
with such consummate completeness as Trollope's Barchester Close. It
is of course purely English, locally true to England only. But it is,
as Nathaniel Hawthorne said, "solid and substantial," "as real as if it
were a great lump out of the earth,"--"just as English as a beefsteak."

What makes all that so strange is this, that when he began to write
novels, Trollope had far less experience than have most cultivated men
of cathedral closes, rectories, and county families. He had never been
to a college, and till past middle life he never had access to the
higher grades of English society. He never at any time, and certainly
not when the Barchester cycle began, had any footing whatever in
clerical circles, and but little intimate acquaintance with young
ladies of birth and refinement in country homes. He never was much
thrown with the young bloods of the army, of the universities, or of
Parliament.