ous and insistent in his talk, he was free from assumption or
conceit, and gave the impression of liking the world he lived in, and
being satisfied with his own place in it. Neither did one observe in
him that erratic turn which is commonly attributed to literary men. He
was a steady and regular worker, who rose every morning between five
and six to turn out a certain quantity of copy for the printer before
breakfast, enjoying his work, and fond of his own characters--indeed
he declared that he filled his mind with them and saw them moving
before him--yet composing a novel just as other people might compose
tables of statistics. These methodical habits were to some extent due
to his training as a clerk in the Post Office, where he spent the
earlier half of his working life, having retired in 1864. He did not
neglect his duties there, even when occupied in writing, and claimed
to have been the inventor of the pillar letter-box. It was probably in
his tours as an inspector of postal deliveries that he obtained that
knowledge of rural life which gives reality to his pictures of country
society. He turned his Civil Service experiences to account in some of
his stories, giving faithful and characteristic sketches, in _The
Three Clerks_ and _The Small House at Allington_, of different types
of Government officials, a class which is much more of a class in
England than it is in America, though less of a class than it is in
Germany or France. His favourite amusement was hunting, as readers of
his novels know, and until his latest years he might have been seen,
though a heavy weight, following the hounds in Essex once or twice a
week.

When E. A. Freeman wrote a magazine article denouncing the cruelty of
field sports, Trollope replied, defending the amusement he loved. Some
one said it was a collision of two rough diamonds. But the end was
that Freeman invited Trollope to come and stay with him at Wells, and
they became great friends.

Like most of his literary contemporaries, he was a politician, and
indeed a pretty keen one. He once contested in the Liberal interest--in
those days literary men were mostly Liberals--the borough of Beverley in
Yorkshire, a corrupt little place, where bribery proved too strong
for him. It was thereafter disfranchised as a punishment for its
misdeeds; and his costly experiences doubtless suggested the clever
electioneering sketches in the story of _Ralph the Heir_. Thackeray
also was once a Libe