to my audience"; and he tells us that he has used some of his novels for the expression of his political and social convictions. Again--"The novelist must please, and he must teach; a good novel should be both realistic and sensational in the highest degree." He says that he sees no reason why two or three good novels should not be written at the same time; and that, for his own part, he was accustomed to write two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes, by the watch, during his working hours. Nor does he mind letting us know that when he sits down to write a novel, he neither knows nor cares how it is to end. And finally, one is a little startled to hear him say, epigrammatically, that a writer should not have to tell a story, but should have a story to tell. Beyond a doubt, Anthony Trollope is something of a paradox. The world has long ago passed its judgment on his stories, but it is interesting, all the same, to note his own opinion of them; and though never arrogant, he is generally tolerant, if not genial. "A novel should be a picture of common life, enlivened by humor and sweetened by pathos. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius," he says; but again, with strange imperviousness, "A small daily task, if it be daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." Beat them, how? Why, in quantity. But how about quality? Is the travail of a work of art the same thing as the making of a pair of shoes? Emerson tells us that-- "Ever the words of the gods resound, But the porches of man's ear Seldom, in this low life's round, Are unsealed, that he may hear." No one disputes, however, that you may hear the tapping of the cobbler's hammer at any time. To the view of the present writer, how much good soever Mr. Trollope may have done as a preacher and moralist, he has done great harm to English fictitious literature by his novels; and it need only be added, in this connection, that his methods and results in novel-writing seem best to be explained by that peculiar mixture of separateness and commonplaceness which we began by remarking in him. The separateness has given him the standpoint whence he has been able to observe and describe the commonplaceness with which (in spite of his separateness) he is in vital sympathy.