Mr. Trollope's masterpiece in this novel is Sir Thomas Underwood, a barrister, living in chambers, with two daughters at Putney, who has been Solicitor-General, and who has been all his life purposing to write a life of Bacon--a conception, again, of a respectable form of a somewhat selfish and irresolute character, but admirably portrayed. So is Ontario Moggs, the son of Ralph's bootmaker, his rival in the affections of Polly Neefit, a red-hot Communist orator, and the working man's candidate in the Percycross election. In the description of this election, at which Sir Thomas was returned and then unseated on petition, Mr. Trollope has excelled himself. Contested elections have often been described; Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot especially, have found them as fruitful in humour as Hogarth did. George Eliot excepted, we doubt if any living writer could approach the skill and power with which the election of Percycross, the tactics of its candidates, and the characteristics of its free and independent electors are described; happily, it is now disfranchised for bribery. Mr. Trollope's selection of types of characters and his successful delineation of them are equal even to his best work. Sir Thomas and old Neefit are not surpassed by Mrs. Proudie and Archdeacon Grantley. Every portrait is characteristic, and is most carefully finished. There are few things in fiction finer than the subtle admixture of excellencies and defects in Sir Thomas. We do not care much for 'Ralph the Heir;' we feel neither great indignation at his sins nor great satisfaction with his virtues. He will be as happy as a nature like his can be. Old Neefit is, in his way, as distinctive in drawing and indelible in impression as Pickwick himself, only, of course, far less agreeable. Mr. Trollope is a Dutch artist, and paints with the fidelity of a Teniers and the power of a Paul Potter. It is not the highest school of art, but Mr. Trollope is a master in it, and 'Ralph the Heir' is one of his greatest pictures. If one word may designate it, it is a novel of selfishness exhibited in various striking types, not pleasant, but unquestionably powerful, and likely to live when many things that Mr. Trollope has done are dead and forgotten. _Joshua Marvel._ By B. L. FARJEON. Tinsley Brothers.