t of
refinement in her lively, but coarsely-coloured pages. For the rest, she
is a shrewd observer; has a considerable insight into human nature,
especially on its "seamy side"; and if a hard hitter, generally keeps
her good temper, and does not resent a fair stroke from an antagonist.
As a humorist she takes high rank: there are scenes in her novels, as
well as in her records of travel, which are marked by a real and
vigorous, if somewhat masculine, fun. Perhaps some of her defects are
due to the influences among which she lived--that ultra Toryism of the
Castlereagh school which resented each movement of reform, each impulse
of progress, as a direct revolutionary conspiracy against everything
approved and established by "the wisdom of our ancestors"--that
narrowness of thought and shallowness of feeling which resisted all
change, even when its necessity was most apparent.

That Mrs. Trollope's prejudices sometimes prevail over her sense of
justice is apparent in the ridicule she lavishes upon the rigid
observance of the Sabbath by the American people. She forgot that they
inherited it from the English Puritans. If her evidence may be accepted,
it amounted in her day to a bigotry as implacable as that of the
straitest sect of the Scotch Presbyterians a generation ago. She tells
an anecdote to the following effect:--A New York tailor sold, on a
Sunday, some clothes to a sailor whose ship was on the point of sailing.
The Guild of Tailors immediately made their erring brother the object of
the most determined persecution, and succeeded in ruining him. A lawyer
who had undertaken his defence lost all his clients. The nephew of this
lawyer sought admission to the bar. His certificates were perfectly
regular; but on his presenting himself he was rejected, with the curt
explanation that no man bearing the name of F---- (his uncle's name)
would be admitted. We need hardly add that such fanaticism as this would
not be possible now in the United States.

Mrs. Trollope's animadversions are obsolete on many other subjects. Much
of her indignation was necessarily, and very justly bestowed on the then
flourishing institution of domestic slavery; but that foul blot on her
scutcheon America wiped out in blood, the blood of thousands of her
bravest children. Her criticism upon manners and social customs has
also, to a great extent, lost its power of application. Of its
liveliness and pungency we may give, however, a specimen; her
des