The chapter that he devotes to the English novelists of his day is very interesting. He places Thackeray first, George Eliot second, and Dickens third. Most readers would perhaps reverse this order. Of Thackeray’s great work he says: “I myself regard ‘Esmond’ as the greatest novel in the English language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its language, on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth of its delineations in regard to the time selected, and on its great pathos.” He pays a high tribute to Charlotte Bronte, and then adds: “‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Esmond,’ and ‘Adam Bede,’ will be in the hands of our grandchildren, when ‘Pickwick’ and ‘Pelham’ and ‘Harry Lorrequer’ are forgotten; because the men and women depicted are human in their aspirations, human in their sympathies, and human in their actions.” He commends Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade quite highly, but thinks the latter has no clear conception of literary honesty. Mr. Trollope relates an amusing incident concerning one of his favorite characters. He was seated in a club room, when two clergymen entered and commenced to criticise his works. “The gravamen of their complaint lay in the fact that I introduced the same characters so often. ‘Here,’ said one, ‘is the archdeacon whom we have had in every novel he has ever written.’ ‘And here,’ said the other, ‘is the old duke whom he has talked about till everybody is tired of him. If I could not invent new characters, I would not write novels at all.’ Then one of them fell foul of Mrs. Proudie. It was impossible for me not to hear their words, and almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got up, and standing between them, I acknowledged myself to be the culprit. ‘As to Mrs. Proudie,’ I said, ‘I will go home and kill her before the week is over.’ And so I did. The two gentlemen were utterly confounded, and one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations. I have sometimes regretted the deed, so great was my delight in writing about Mrs. Proudie, … and I still live much in company with her ghost.” Mr. Trollope made a number of visits to the United States, and was in Washington at the time of the Mason and Slidell controversy. Mr. Sumner was opposed to giving up the men. Mr. Seward’s counsel prevailed with President Lincoln, and the men were released. He says that this “was the severest danger that the Northern cause encountered during the war.” He describes a visit to Brigham Young as follows: