Trollope treats us to another fox hunt. A great lover of the chase, he was always on firm ground here. Thrown off almost in passing is a little comic masterpiece, the depiction of two fox hunting sisters: "But when the time for riding did come, when the hounds were really running--when other young ladies had begun to go home--then the Miss Tristams were always there;--there or thereabouts, as their admirers would warmly boast." Julia Tristam plays a pivotal role in the major subplot as she makes a difficult jump; Felix Graham and his friend Augustus Stavely, who have been following her in an effort to participate in the best of the hunt, attempt to follow, and Felix does not make it, falling off his horse and finding that he cannot raise his arm and can hardly breathe--an accurate portrayal of the symptoms of a broken collarbone and fractured ribs. "Both Peregrine and Miss Tristam looked back. 'There's nothing wrong I hope,' said the lady; and then she rode on." This injury results in Felix's confinement in the Stavely house, where he and Madeline Stavely fall in love. _Barchester Towers_ and Mrs. Proudie stand as evidence that Trollope's greatest gift was comic, and we find some humor in _Orley Farm_, even though a courtroom case doesn't allow for much levity. Mrs. Furnival's quarrel with her husband supplies comic relief, and Mr. Kantwise's sale of a metal table and chairs to Mr. Dockwrath and to Squire Mason is appropriately memorialized in Millais's drawing of Mr. Kantwise standing on the metal table: "There is nothing like iron, Sir; nothing." To attempt to place a value on _Orley Farm_: it is good enough to be fairly compared to _Bleak House_, generally regarded as one of Dicken's masterpieces, and one that has been successfully presented as a television series. Nothing in _Orley Farm_ matches the opening paragraphs of _Bleak House_, in which the description of the rain and mud of London sends us to turn up the heat, even if the room is warm. Dickens manages the pace of _Bleak House_ very well, with the tempo galloping toward a conclusion in the last hundred pages or so. But Lady Mason is a more interesting woman than Lady Dedlock. Mr. Tulkinghorn is a lawyer of great power and mystery in _Bleak House_, but Mr. Furnival is shown in greater depth, and in his concluding speech to the court we see him at the peak of his powers. The spontaneous combustion that Dickens invokes to carry off Mr. Krook is so improbable that one doubts if even any of his readers believed it; but the proceedings of _Orley Farm_, if not so violent, are so true to life that the events might have been lifted from the newspapers.