We may at once confess to his faults and limitations. They are plain enough, constant, and quite incapable of defence. Out of his sixty works, I should be sorry to pick more than ten as being worth a second reading, or twenty which are worth a first reading. Nor amongst the good books could I count any of the last ten years. The range of characters is limited to the clergy and professional men of a cathedral city, to the county families and the respectabilities of a quiet village, to the life of clubs, public offices, and Parliament in London, and to the ways of "society" as it existed in England in the third quarter of the present century. The plots are neither new nor ingenious; the incidents are rarely more than commonplace; the characters are seldom very powerful, or original, or complex. There are very few "psychologic problems," very few dramatic situations, very few revelations of a new world and unfamiliar natures. There are some natural scenes in Ireland; now and then a cook-maid, a farmer, a labourer, or a clerk, come on the stage and play their short parts with faultless demeanour. But otherwise, the entire company appear in the frock-coats and crinolines of the period, and every scene is played in silk hats, bonnets, and regulation evening toilette. But within this limited range of life, this uniformity of "genteel comedy," Trollope has not seldom given us pieces of inimitable truthfulness and curious delicacy of observation. The dignitaries of the cathedral close, the sporting squires, the county magnates, the country doctors, and the rectory home, are drawn with a precision, a refinement, an absolute fidelity that only Jane Austen could compass. There is no caricature, no burlesque, nothing improbable or over-wrought. The bishop, the dean, the warden, the curate, the apothecary, the duke, the master of fox-hounds, the bishop's wife, the archdeacon's lady, the vicar's daughter, the governess, the undergraduate--all are perfectly true to nature. So, too, are the men in the clubs in London, the chiefs, subordinates, and clerks in the public offices, the ministers and members of Parliament, the leaders, and rank and file of London "society." They never utter a sentence which is not exactly what such men and women do utter; they do and they think nothing but what such men and women think and do in real life. Their habits, conversation, dress, and interests are photographically accurate, to the point of illusion. It is not high art--but it is art. The field is a narrow one; the actors are ordinary. But the skill, grace, and humour with which the scenes are caught, and the absolute illusion of truthfulness, redeem it from the commonplace.