r
sympathies or her hatreds, the social and political manners exposed to
her searching gaze.

* * * * *

France was not the only field of study which she found in Europe. In
1838 she published her "Vienna and the Austrians," in which her old
antipathies and causticities reappeared; and in 1843, a "Visit to
Italy," which was far from being a success. The classic air of Italy
was not favourable to the development of her peculiar powers, and among
the antiquities of Rome the humour which sketched so forcibly the broad
features of American society was necessarily out of place.

Our business in these pages is with Mrs. Trollope the traveller, but of
the industry of Mrs. Trollope the novelist we may reasonably give the
reader an idea. In 1836 she published "The Adventures of Jonathan
Jefferson Whitlaw," in which she renewed her attacks on American
society, and drew a forcible sketch of the condition of the coloured
population of the Southern States. Some of the scenes may fairly be
credited with having suggested to Dickens the tone and sentiment of his
American pictures in "Martin Chuzzlewit." Her best novel, "The Vicar of
Wrexhill"--a highly-coloured portrait of an Anglican Tartuffe, bitter in
its prejudices, but full of talent--appeared in 1837; the "Romance of
Vienna," an attack on caste distinctions, in 1838. To the same year
belongs her "Michael Armstrong," in which her Ishmael hand fell heavily
on the narrow-mindedness of the manufacturing class--anticipating, in
some degree, Dickens's "Hard Times." "One Fault," a satire upon romantic
exaggeration; and the coarse, but clever "Widow Barnaby," a racy history
of the troubles of a vulgar-genteel _bourgeoise_ in search of a second
husband, were published in 1839; and in the following year appeared its
sequel, "The Widow Married," which is quite as coarse as its
predecessor, but not so amusing. With indefatigable pen she produced,
in 1843, three three-volume novels, "Hargreave," "Jessie Phillips," and
"The Laurringtons"--the first a not very successful sketch of a man of
fashion; the second, an unfair and exaggerated delineation of the action
of the new Poor Law; and the third, a forcible and lively satire upon
"superior people," in which some of the passages are in her best style.

In 1844 the industrious satirist, who would have been more generally
successful had she selected the objects of her attacks with greater
discretion, withdrew to