In Trollope’s novels we have English life, especially well drawn; and though many scenes are laid in London, his characters always gravitate back to the country whence they derive their influence and prestige. It is not my intention to elaborate more than one side of this very versatile and copious writer. His political novels, for example, are well worth studying, especially “Phineas Finn.” In “The Bertrams” we have an excellent picture of Oxford life in the opening chapter. Personal experience gave Trollope unusual insight into the characters of the government officials of his time. He was wonderfully quick at seizing on types hitherto unknown in English society who were gradually becoming forces in the world. Even as a writer on sport he deserves a place. For what can be better than his description of the young, popular, able clergyman in “Framley Parsonage,” whose very success leads him into some very difficult situations? I need not remind you, for I find he is widely read in this country, of his treatment of social gatherings in great houses like that of the Duke of Omnium. All I intend to do is to ask you to examine his clerical types and, perhaps, to offer some explanations which may be useful. The state of things we read of in such books as “The Warden” and “Barchester Towers” has almost, but not quite, disappeared, and I confess that, although I think I understand it, I find a difficulty in making it clear to you. The initial problem is to explain why life in a cathedral city is often rural rather than town life. In the first place the word “city” in England used to be applied only to places where there was a cathedral. Ely, though still a town of some 8000 people, is always spoken of as a “city” and so are Llandaff and St. David’s, which are little more than villages; and, till very recently, Liverpool and Birmingham were styled “towns.” Leicester, with some 300,000 inhabitants, is still, I believe, technically a “town.” The older cathedrals are in fact generally in small places which were once very important “cities,” but have been outstripped by what then were little better than hamlets, but have long since become great centres of population. Such are Canterbury, Chichester, Salisbury, Wells, Ely, and Lichfield. Barchester was emphatically a country town, dominated by the landowners in the vicinity; and the clergy around it were a rural priesthood. The society which was centred in any cathedral was and still is unlike anything else in the world. In the middle ages a great cathedral, like Salisbury or Lincoln, was designed for a semi-monastic rather than congregational worship. It was served by a community of priests, called “canons” because they observed a “canon,” or rule of life. Joined with these was a veritable army of inferior priests, singers and ministers, all under the control of the dean, who presided over the cathedral, as the bishop over the diocese. This vast and