as Lily's talks with her sister Bell, and much to the same purpose; but the fun, the light satire, the finesse of the one are utterly different from the quiet wisdom, the acuteness, and the humour veiling itself from the simpler listener, and enjoying the trifling perplexities it creates, of the other. In delicacy of mind, in refinement of feeling, in all that constitutes the true gentlewoman, and which Mr. Trollope has such rare tact in conveying, the two girls are equal, but Mary Flood Jones would never have loved Adolphus Crosbie, but Lily Dale would never have forgiven Phineas Finn. The picture of the little household at Allington is as sweet, as sunny, and as true as any home picture that ever was painted, and the evenings in which Crosbie won Lily's heart are memorable. Just as minutely excellent is the entirely different picture of Dr. Malachi Finn's house at Killaloe in the county Clare, and the tea-parties at which Phineas Finn, aided assiduously by his sister Barbara, carries on his flirtation with that Mary who is as pretty as ever she could be." This little bit of description is a match for the walk home from Uncle Dale's.

When the girls went down into the drawing-room Mary was careful to go to a part of the room quite apart from Phineas, so as to seat herself between Mrs. Finn and Dr. Finn's young partner, Mr. Elias Bodkin, from Ballinasloe. But Mrs. Finn, and the Misses Finn, and all Killaloe knew that Mary had no love for Mr. Bodkin, and when Mr. Bodkin handed her the hot cake she barely so much as smiled at him. But in two minutes Phineas was behind her chair, and then she smiled; and in five minutes more she had got herself so twisted round that she was sitting in a corner with Phineas and his sister Barbara; and in two more minutes Barbara had returned to Mr. Elias Bodkin, so that Phineas and Mary were uninterrupted. manage these things very quickly and very cleverly in Killaloe.

They

"I shall be off to-morrow morning by the early train," said Phineas. "So soon; and when will you have to begin--in Parliament I mean?" "I shall have to take my seat on Friday. I'm going back just in

time."

"But when shall we hear of your saying something?" "Never, probably. Not one in ten who go into Parliament ever do say anything."

"But you will, won't you ? I hope you will. I do hope you will distinguish yourself, because of your sister, and for the sake of the town, you know."

"And is that all, Mary?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"You don't care a bit about myself, then?"

"You know that I do.

Haven't we been friends ever since we were

children? Of course it will be a great pride to me that a person whom I have ever known should come to be talked about as a great man."

"I shall never be talked about as a great man."

"You're a great man to me already, being in Parliament. Only think,--I never saw a member of Parliament before."

"You've seen the Bishop scores of times."

“Is he in Parliament? Ah, but not like you. He couldn't come to be a cabinet minister, and one never reads anything about him in the newspapers. I shall expect to see your name very often, and I shall always look for it. Mr. Phineas Finn paired off with Mr. Mildmay.' What is the meaning of pairing off?"

"I'll explain it all to you when I come back, after learning my lesson."

"Mind you do come back. But I don't suppose you ever will. You will be going somewhere to see Lady Laura Standish when you are not wanted in Parliament."

"Lady Laura Standish!"

"And why shouldn't you? Of course, with your prospects you should go as much as possible among people of that sort. Is Lady Laura very pretty?"

"She's about six feet high."

"Nonsense. I don't believe that."

"She would look as though she were, standing by you."

"Because I am so insignificant and small.”

"Because your figure is perfect, and she is straggling. She is as unlike you as possible in everything. She has thick lumpy red hair, while yours is all silk and softness. She has large hands and feet, and

"Why Phineas, you are making her out to be an ogress, and yet I know that you admire her."

"So I do, because she possesses such an appearance of power. And after all, in spite of the lumpy hair, and in spite of large hands and straggling figure, she is handsome. One can't tell what it is. One sees that she is quite contented with herself, and intends to make others contented with her. And so she does."

"I see you are in love with her, Phineas."

"No, not in love,-not with her at least. Of all men in the world, I suppose I am the last that has a right to be in love. I daresay I shall marry some day."

"I am sure I hope you will."

"But not till I am forty or perhaps fifty years old. If I was not fool enough to have what men call a high ambition, I might venture to be in love now."

"I'm sure I'm very glad that you've got a high ambition. It is what every man ought to have, and I have no doubt that we shall hear of your marriage soon, very soon. And then,--if she can help you in your ambition, we— shall-all-be-so-glad."

Mr. Trollope does not succeed in dialogue merely because he makes it natural and characteristic, but also because he

takes the trouble of writing in the small things which people really do say, even on momentous and exceptional occasions, and which the lower orders of novelists agree to leave out. Whatever be the subject on which he makes his people talk, whether it be the familiar, finessing dialogue of flirtation, the measured speech of political discussion, the hurried language of quarrel, the "high-polite" of conversation when a great lady who is also clever holds salon, or the unceremonious colloquy of men of business discussing matters of money, he makes them all natural. His lovers do not talk rhapsody, his politicians do not talk pamphlets.

The departure of Phineas Finn for London is a truly Irish scene, when everybody gets up to see him off, his father gives him an extra twenty-pound note, and begs him for God's sake to be careful about his money, his mother tells him always to have an orange in his hand when he intends to speak longer than usual, and Barbara begs him never to forget dear Mary Flood Jones. The whole of his history is symbolized in those three injunctions, and every one knows how he observed them, and into what company money, politics, and love-making (which Mr. Trollope knows how to distinguish with amazing subtlety from love), brought Phineas Finn, the Irish member, "whose nature was to be pleasant."

Mr. Trollope is the one existing English novelist who writes about great people without any affectation, and with easy acquaintance with their manners and ways of life. He does not affect to despise rank, or to regard social inequality as a stupid sham, in which the man who takes precedence is usually a fool, and in everything but his name the inferior of the man whom he precedes. His noblemen are gentlemen, and the persons whom he introduces to their society are at ease in it. The Irish member, who is the son of a doctor in a small country town, is quite in his place at an earl's dinner-table, and in the drawing-room of an earl's daughter. He is neither insolent, sarcastic, nor fawning, nor are the great people who like him guilty of the insolence of patronizing, or the vulgarity of lionizing him. Lady Laura Standish is not one of Mr. Trollope's best portraits. She fails to attract that perfect sympathy, which he usually commands for every one for whom he desires it, but she is an exact representation of a woman of rank, in a great social position, and her individuality is as marked as that of any of Mr. Trollope's more interesting female characters. The Brentford family is the antithesis of the De Courcy family, and Lord Chiltern is perhaps on the whole the most dramatic and picturesque personage to be found in the writer's books, winning a certain sympathy, notwithstand

ing his fierce, impetuous nature, and his gloomy temper, by his inexorable truthfulness. While the reader is following the fortunes of Phineas Finn in Parliament, in the flowery but unsafe ways of "society," and in his complicated sentimental relations, he is also kept en rapport with that racy Irish life which Phineas abandons, and which furnishes so striking a contrast to and comment upon the dignified activity of Grosvenor-square, and the ponderous wealth and sullen misery of Loughlinter, the splendid residence of Lady Laura's husband. From Loughlinter to Killaloe one turns with keen pleasure, recognizing the skill and the truth with which the great lady's loveless marriage is made to bring its swift punishment, and the enduring, unselfish faith, hope, and charity of the humble Irish girl also bear their fruit in due season. This book contains an entire gallery of highly-finished portraits, which are striking instances of the minute care and pains with which Mr. Trollope does his work. His knowledge of the machinery of Parliamentary affairs is very remarkable; he displays it in numberless ways, evidently knowing exactly the technical nature of the business of every man officially connected with the working of the great system, and taking a keen interest in every detail. Nor are his political sketches one-sided or confined to the select ranks of "the House." No writer in England, except it be the author of "Felix Holt," could have produced such a picture as that of Mr. Bunce, in whose house in Great Marlborough-street Phineas Finn takes lodgings when he relinquishes his chambers and "goes in " for fashion and "place."

Mr. Bunce was a copying journeyman, who spent ten hours a day in Carey Street, with a pen between his fingers; and after that he would spend two or three hours of the night, with a pen between his fingers, in Marlborough Street. He was a thoroughly hard-working man, doing pretty well in the world, for he had a good house over his head, and always could find raiment and bread for his eight children; but nevertheless he was an unhappy man, because he suffered from political grievances, or, I should more correctly say, that his grievances were semi-political and semi-social. He had no vote, not being himself the tenant of the house in Great Marlborough Street. The tenant was a tailor, who occupied the shop, whereas Bunce occupied the whole of the remainder of the premises. He was a lodger, and lodgers were not yet trusted with the franchise. And he had ideas, which he himself admitted to be very sad, as to the injustice of the manner in which he was paid for his work. So much a folio, without reference to the way in which his work was done, without regard to the success of his work, with no questions asked of himself, was, as he thought, no proper way of remunerating a man for his labours. He had long since joined a trades' union, and for two years past had paid a subscription of a shilling a week towards its funds. He

longed to be doing some battle against his superiors; not that he objected personally to his employers, who always made much of him as a useful man, but because some such antagonism would be manly, and the fighting of some battle would be the right thing to do. "If Labour don't want to go to the wall himself," Bunce would say to his wife, "labour must look alive and put somebody else there." Mrs. Bunce was a comfortable, motherly woman, who loved her husband, but hated politics. As he had an aversion to his superiors in this world because they were his superiors, so had she a liking for them for the same reason. She despised people poorer than herself, and thought it a fair subject for boasting that her children always had meat for dinner. If it was ever so small a morsel she took care they had it, that the boast might be maintained. The world had once or twice been almost too much for her; when, for instance, her husband had been ill, and again, for the last three months of that long period in which Phineas had omitted to pay his bills; but she had kept a fine, brave heart during those troubles, and could honestly swear that the children always had a bit of meat, though she herself had been without it for days together. At such times she would be more than ordinarily courteous to the old lady who lodged in her first-floor drawingroom, and she would excuse such servility by declaring there was no knowing how soon she might want assistance. But her husband, in such emergencies, would become furious and quarrelsome, and would declare that labour was going to the wall, and that something very strong must be done at once. That shilling which Bunce paid weekly to the union she regarded as being absolutely thrown away, as much as though he had put it weekly into the Thames. And she had told him so over and over again, making heart-piercing allusions to the eight children and to the bit of meat. He would always endeavour to explain to her that there was no other way under the sun of keeping labour from being sent to the wall; but he would do so hopelessly, and altogether ineffectually, and she had come to regard him as a lunatic to the extent of that one weekly shilling. She had a woman's instinctive partiality for comeliness in a man, and was very fond of Phineas Finn because he was handsome. And now she was very proud of him because he was a member of Parliament. She had heard from her husband, who told her the fact with much disgust, that the sons of dukes and earls go into Parliament, and she liked to think that the fine journeyman to whom she talked more or less every day should sit with the sons of dukes and earls. When Phineas had really brought distress upon her by owing her some thirty or forty pounds, she could never bring herself to be angry with him, because he was handsome, and because he dined out with lords. And she had triumphed greatly over her husband, who had desired to be severe upon his aristocratic debtor, when the money had all been paid in a lump."

Throughout the whole of the Barchester series, including "Can You Forgive Her?" the Duke of Omnium is little more than an abstraction; a great centre of rank and wealth; a rallying-point for ambitious and interested scheming; the object of homage, flattery, and apprehension; neither so happy nor so really important a man as Plantagenet Palliser, his ex