This is probably the best of Mr. Trollope’s numerous works.  It is by no means different in kind from its predecessors; for it stands in the path struck out by “The Warden” ten years ago.  But it is better, inasmuch as it is later; that is, it is by ten years better than “The Warden,” and by four years better than “Framley Parsonage.”  Mr. Trollope’s course has been very even,—­too even, almost, to be called brilliant; for success has become almost monotonous with him.  His first novel was a triumph, after its kind; and a list of his subsequent works would be but a record of repeated triumphs.  He has closely adhered to the method which he found so serviceable at first; and although it is not for the general critic to say whether he has felt temptations to turn aside, we may be sure, in view of his unbroken popularity, that he has either been very happy or very wise.  His works, as they stand, are probably the exact measure of his strength.

We do not mean that he has exhausted his strength.  It seems to be the prime quality of such a genius as Mr. Trollope’s that it is exempt from accident,—­that it accumulates, rather than loses force with age.  Mr. Trollope’s work is simple observation.  He is secure, therefore, as long as he retains this faculty.  And his observation is the more efficient that it is hampered by no concomitant purpose, rooted to no underlying beliefs or desires.  It is firmly anchored, but above-ground.  We have often heard Mr. Trollope compared with Thackeray,—­but never without resenting the comparison.  In no point are they more dissimilar than in the above.  Thackeray is a moralist, a satirist; he tells his story for its lesson:  whereas Mr. Trollope tells his story wholly for its own sake.  Thackeray is almost as much a preacher as he is a novelist; while Mr. Trollope is the latter simply.  Both writers are humorists, which seems to be the inevitable mood of all shrewd observers; and both incline to what is called quiet humor.  But we know that there are many kinds of laughter.  Think of the different kinds of humorists we find in Shakspeare’s comedies.  Mr. Trollope’s merriment is evoked wholly by the actual presence of an oddity; and Thackeray’s, although it be, by the way, abundantly sympathetic with superficial comedy, by its existence, by its history, by some shadow it casts.  Of course all humorists have an immense common fund.  When Cradell, in the present tale, talks about Mrs. Lupex’s fine torso, we are reminded both of Thackeray and Dickens.  But when the Squire, coming down to the Small House to discuss his niece’s marriage, just avoids a quarrel with his sister about the propriety of early fires, we acknowledge, that, as it stands, the trait belongs to Trollope alone.  Dickens would have eschewed it, and Thackeray would have expanded it.  The same remark applies to their pathos.  With Trollope we weep, if it so happen we can, for a given shame or wrong.  Our sympathy in the work before us is for the jilted Lily Dale, our indignation for her false lover.  But our compassion for Amelia Osborne and Colonel Newcome goes to the whole race of the oppressed.