lose sight of Courcy Castle, of his Club, of his London life; we cross the threshold of his inner being, we knock at the door of his soul, but we remain within call of Lily Dale and the Lady Alexandrina.  We never see Crosbie the man, but always Crosbie the gentleman, the Government clerk.  We feel at times as if we had a right to know him better,—­to know him at least as well as he knew himself.  It is significant of Mr. Trollope’s temperament—­a temperament, as it seems to us, eminently English—­that he can have told such a story with so little preoccupation with certain spiritual questions.  It is evident that this spiritual reticence, if we may so term it, is not a parti pris; for no fixed principle, save perhaps the one hinted at above, is apparent in the book.  It belongs to a species of single-sightedness, by which Mr. Trollope, in common with his countrymen, is largely characterized,—­an indifference to secondary considerations, an abstinence from sidelong glances.  It is akin to an intense literalness of perception, of which we might find an example on every page Mr. Trollope has written.  He is conscious of seeing the surface of things so clearly, perhaps, that he deems himself exempt from all profounder obligations.  To describe accurately what he sees is a point of conscience with him.  In these matters an omission is almost a crime.  We remember an instance somewhat to the purpose.  After describing Mrs. Dale’s tea-party at length, in the beginning of the book, he wanders off with Crosbie and his sweetheart on a moonlight-stroll, and so interests us in the feelings of the young couple, and in Crosbie’s plans and promises for the future, (which we begin faintly to foresee,) that we have forgotten all about the party.  And, indeed, how could the story of the party end better than by gently passing out of the reader’s mind, superseded by a stronger interest, to which it is merely accessory?  But such is not the author’s view of the case.  Dropping Crosbie, Lilian, and the more serious objects of our recent concern, he begins a new line and ends his chapter thus:—­“After that they all went to bed.”  It recalls the manner of “Harry and Lucy,” friends of our childhood.

But to return to our starting-point,—­in “The Small House at Allington” Mr. Trollope has outdone his previous efforts.  He has used his best gifts in unwonted fulness.  Never before has he described young ladies and the loves of young ladies in so charming and so natural a fashion.  Never before has he reproduced so faithfully—­to say no more—­certain phases of the life and conversation of the youth of the other sex.  Never before has he caught so accurately the speech of our daily feelings, plots, and passions.  He has a habit of writing which is almost a style; its principal charm is a certain tendency to quaintness; its principal defect is an excess of words.  But we suspect this manner makes easy writing; in Mr. Trollope’s books it certainly makes very easy reading.