His great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of reality. This gift is not rare in the annals of English fiction; it would naturally be found in a walk of literature in which the feminine mind has labored so fruitfully. Women are delicate and patient observers; they hold their noses close, as it were, to the texture of life. They feel and perceive the real (as well as the desirable), and their observations are recorded in a thousand delightful volumes. Trollope therefore, with his eyes comfortably fixed on the familiar, the actual, was far from having invented a _genre_, as the French say; his great distinction is that, in resting there, his vision took in so much of the field. And then he _felt_ all common, human things as well as saw them; felt them in a simple, direct, salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comicality, all their obvious and measurable meanings. Du Maurier. He is predominantly a painter of social, as distinguished from popular life, and when the other day he collected some of his drawings into a volume, he found it natural to give them the title of “English Society at Home.” He looks at the “accomplished” classes more than at the people, though he by no means ignores the humors of humble life. His consideration of the peculiarities of costermongers and “cadgers” is comparatively perfunctory, as he is too fond of civilization and of the higher refinements of the grotesque. His colleague, the frank and as the metaphysicians say, objective, Keene, has a more natural familiarity with the British populace. There is a whole side of English life, at which du Maurier scarcely glances—the great sporting element, which supplies half of their gayety and all their conversation to millions of her Majesty’s subjects. He is shy of the turf and of the cricket field; he only touches here and there upon the river. But he has made “society” completely his own—he has sounded its depths, explored its mysteries, discovered and divulged its secrets. His observation of these things is extraordinarily acute, and his illustrations, taken together, form a complete comedy of manners, in which the same personages constantly re-appear, so that we have the sense, indispensable to keenness of interest, of tracing their adventures to a climax. So many of the conditions of English life are picturesque (and, to American eyes, even romantic), that du Maurier has never been at a loss for subjects. We mean that he is never at a loss for pictures. English society makes pictures all round him, and he has only to look to see the most charming things, which at the same time have the merit that you can always take the satirical view of them. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. He is equal as an artist to the best French writers. His books are not only artistically fine, but morally wholesome.—_Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes._