B OOKS.

THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET.*

MR. TROLLOP); is, after all, a little bit of a hypocrite. His title and his concluding page are put forward by him as merits for the sake of which readers may forgive slight defects. Now, all that his title and his concluding page tell us is, that we are to hear no more from him about the diocese of Barchester. Mr. Trol- lope knows well enough that this is not an announcement which any one will read with satisfaction, so, like a great speaker who, though all the world wishes to hear him as long as he can sustain the flow of his eloquence, makes it a merit to disappoint them, and sit down after a few words, Mr. Trollope promises, in return for our forbearance, that we shall hear of Barchester no more. The general effect of this announcement has been naturally enough very great discouragement. Men who do not go much into society feel as if all the society they had, had suddenly agreed to emigrate to New Zealand, or Vancouver's Island, or some other place, where they will never hear of them any more. " What am I to do without ever meeting Archdeacon Grantly ?" a man said the other day ; " he was one of my best and most intimate friends, and the were prospect of never hearing his ' Good heavens l' again when any proposition is made touching the dignity • • The Ind Chronicle of Barset. By Anthony Trollops. Two wola. Loodpa Smith and Elder.

of Church or State, is a bewilderment and pain to me. It was bad enough to lose the Old Warden, Mr. Septimus Harding, but that was a natural death, and we must all bow to blows of that kind. But to lose the Archdeacon and Mrs. Grantly in the prima of their life, is more than I can bear. Life has lost one of its princi- pal alleviations. Mr. Trollope has no right to break old ties in this cruel and reckless way, only to please himself, and then make a hypocritical merit of it." We confess to feeling a good deal of sympathy with this gentleman. Even the present writer has found the loneliness very oppressive since he was told that he was never to meet almost the beet known and most typical of his fellow-countrymen again, and has indulged some rash thoughts of leaving England for ever. What makes it worse is, that there is no sort of comfort in this case as to a future reunion. If we do not hear of Mr. and Mrs. Crawley again in this world, where else can we meet them, unless Mr. Trollope is con- demned for his sin in thus abruptly cutting the thread of their mor- tal lives to continue their history for ever in another sphere ? And that is not a contingency to which we can look with much hope. On the whole, it is a bitter and needless parting. If all the world prefer to hear about these Barchester people, whom they know so well, to hearing about other new people whom they do not know at all and care nothing for, and Mr. Trollope is the only person who knows about them, it is a selfish and cruel pro- ceeding on his part to shut them off from their friends. It is bard enough to have the death of two of our old friends reported within a couple of months of each other. Mrs. Proudie's was, however, as she herself might have said, in some sense a " merciful dispensa- tion," and Mr. Harding's occurred in the course of nature. But their deaths should have rendered Mr. Trollops only more tender of the feelings of those who have grown so fond of the Barchester set. It is positively heartless to wrench us away at one fell stroke from all of them—Mr. Crawley, old Lady Luf ton, Mr. Roberts, Dr. Tempest of Silverbridge, Dean Arabin, Bishop Proudie, Mr. Thumble, the broken-kneed pony out of the Cathedral stables, and all I For our own part, and from a purely naturalist point of view, we feel the loss of Mr. Thumble almost as poignantly as any other. His behaviour at Mr. Crawley's after tat unfortunate pony of the Bishop's had broken its knees under him, and when he wanted Major Grantly to take him back in his gig to Barchester, was such a delightful mixture of feeble impertinence to persons in misfortune and feeble servility to persons in prosperity, that we have lost in him a distinct type of human nature. Perhaps, however, he may leave the diocese of Barchester, and reappear elsewhere in Mr. Trollope's horizon. Nor can we give up the hope of meeting again Mr. Toogood the solicitor, Madeline Bangles, nee Demolines, Sir Raffle Buffle, and other London characters. But that is poor consolation for parting from the circle at Plumstead Episcopi, and from Mr. Crawley—Mr. Trollope's noblest and most unique acquaintance.

To cease, however, from the mood of remonstrance and help- less lamentation,—this chronicle of Barret appears to us really the beat, indeed, the richest and completest of Mr. Trollope's works. Mr. Crawley, the leading figure in it, is cast in a deeper and nobler, if also narrower, mould than most of Mr. Trollope's acquaintances. Both his sins and his virtues have a grander stamp upon them. There is nothing of the earth, earthy, about Mr. Crawley,—his savage spiritual pride being, at least, as intensely unworldly, as his devotion to the brickmakers at Boggle End. Mr. Trollope has never before drawn a character either so full of (indicated rather than delineated) intellectual power, or so devoted to the diviner ends of life, or, again, so deeply involved in the strife of morbid personal feelings. The mixture of the three elements creates a picture of the highest interest and power. The pure intellect of Mr. Crawley is indeed chiefly shown in the acute criticisms he passes on other men's words or letters, and in the power of discerning with the utmost lucidity the limits within which his own memory or reason might have failed him, and in his thorough distrust even of his own clearest impressions to that extent. We are not shown at all as we should like to have been shown how Mr. Crawley's strength and weakness, both, conduced to his peculiar ecclesiastical views as a High-Church clergyman,—a High-Church clergyman, not, remember, of Archdeacon Grantlfs worldly type, but of the true spiritual type, the true priestly type. There is but one passage in which you see for a moment the imagination of the man, and how it dwells on images of restless power fettered by what seems blind circumstance or dead necessity, but that passage certainly does not give a picture of an imagination as orthodox or as sacerdotal as Mr. Crawley's ecclesiastical views appear to imply that be was. It is a fine passage, and as it is one of the finest bits of intellectual delineation Mr. Trollope has ever written, we will extract it. We must remember that Mr. Crawley is at the time suffering agonies,—the more so for his feverish chafing under the burden,—from the unjust suspicion cast upon him as to the stealing of a lost cheque, and his own impotence, with all his talent, to account at all for his possession of it. Mr. Crawley is reading Greek with his daughter :-

"But before he commenced his task, he sat down with his youngest daughter, and read,—or made her read to him,—a passage out of a Greek poem, in which are described the troubles and agonies of a blind giant. No giant would have been more powerful,—only that he was blind, and could not see to avenge himself on those who had injured him.

• The same story is always coming up,' he said, stopping the girl in her reading. ' We have it in various versions, because it is so true to life.

Ask for this great deliver.-r now, and find him Eyeless in Gazq, at the mill with slaves.

It is the same story. Great power reduced to impotence, great glory to misery, by the hand of Fate,—Necessity, as the Greeks called her ; the goddess that will not be shunned ! At the mill with slaves !' People, when they read it, do not appreciate the horror of the picture. Go on, my dear. It may be a question whether Polyphemus had mind enough to suffer; but, from the description of his power, I should think that he had. ' At the mill with slaves !' Can any picture be more dreadful than that ? Go on, my dear. Of course you remember Milton's Samson Agonistes. Agonistes indeed!' His wife was sitting stitching at the other side of the room; but she heard his words,—heard and understood them; and before Jane could again get herself into the swing of the Greek verse, she was over at her husband's side, with her arms round his neck. My love ! ' she said, 'my love !' He turned to her, and smiled as he spoke to her. 'These are old thoughts with me. Polyphemus and Belisarius, and Samson and Milton, have always been pets of mine. The mind of the strong blind creature must be so sensible of the injury that has been done to him ! The impotency, com- bined with his strength, or rather the impotency with the memory of former strength and former aspirations, is so essentially tragic!' She looked into his eyes as she spoke, and there was something of the flash of old days, when the world was young to them, and when he would tell her of his hopes, and repeat to her long passages of poetry, and would criticize for her advantage the works of old writers. Thank God,' she said, ' that you are not blind. It may yet be all right with you.'—' Yes, it may be,' he said.= And you shall not be at the mill with slaves.' =Or, at any rate, not eyeless in Gaza, if the Lord is good to me. Come, Jane, we will go on.' Then he took up the passage himself, and read it on with clear, sonorous voice, every now and then explaining some passage or expressing his own ideas upon it, as though he were really happy with his poetry."

That this type of mind is absolutely consistent with, nay, even in special harmony with, the sort of Church view Mr. Crawley takes, in spite of its apparent revolutionary fire of feel- ing, every thoughtful reader will feel. ,,But Mr. Trollope might, without introducing theology into his novel, have indicated more than he has where the secret of the harmony lies. Mr. Crawley's mind is didactic and authoritative, loving to apply to others both the light and the force requisite to guide them ; and, being also rather hasty in his assumptions, he would have been sure to catch at the idea of a Church authoritatively teaching the people, rather than helping the people to teach themselves. It is only when guidance and authority are applied to himself, and he feels deeply that the lights of those who try to guide are infinitely feebler than those of him who is bound to submit, that a chaos of conflict begins in his soul, the history of which is so finely traced in these pages.

Perhaps the most delicate piece of moral portraiture ever completed by Mr. Trollope is the inimitable sketch of the old warden, Mr. Septimus Harding, whose death in this story has drawn tears from many an eye to which tears are usually strangers. No more perfect delineation of high breeding,

humility, self-forgetfulness, and faith was ever painted. That having painted two such pictures as those of Mr. Crawley and Mr. Harding, Mr. Trollope should be charged with a chronic disposition to libel the English priesthood, and make them a mere set of worldling; is strange to us. No doubt Mr. Trollope sketches men chiefly as he sees them, whether in the Church or otherwise, and he does not see apparently very many men,—either in the Church or otherwise,—quite " unspotted from the world." Nay, even those who are unspotted by the world are sometimes other- wise not unspotted, like Mr. Crawley. But if such a man as Mr. Harding is seldom met with twice in any man's life, why should he be met with twice in any man's works ? Again, nothing in its way can be finer than the picture of the Archdeacon's thorough practical worldliness, and the way it collapses before his im-

pressionable and kind heart, when he comes to see a really pretty girl of high breeding in distress. Mr. Trollope has drawn nothing better than the Archdeacon's interview with old Lady Lufton, wherein he describes his worldly feelings about his son's proposed marriage in a very frank way indeed, and the immediately suc- ceeding interview with the young lady, whom he visits in order to show her the wickedness of marrying his son, and to whom he has given, before the end of the interview, his hearty consent,—almost unconditionally,—in form even conditionally only on her father's proved innocence of the supposed theft, —to that marriage.

" • I know I might not to be your son's wife as long as people think that papa stole the money. If he had stolen it, I ought never to be Major Grantly's wife,—or anybody's wife. I know that very well. And as for Edith,—I would sooner die than do anything that would be bad to her.'—Tho Archdeacon had now left the rug, and advanced till he was almost close to the chair on which Grace was sitting. My dear,' ho said, what you say does you very much honour,—very much • honour indeed.' Now that ho was close to her, he could look into her eyes, and he could see the exact form of her features, and could under- stand,—could not help understanding,—the character of her counten- ance. It was a noble Paco, having in it nothing that was poor, nothing that was mean, nothing that was shapeless. It was a face that promised infinite beauty, with a promise that was on the very verge of fulfilment. There was a play about her mouth as she spoke, and a curl in her nostril as the eager words came from her, which almost made the selfish father give way. Why had they not told him that she was such a one as this ? Why had not Henry himself spoken of the speciality of her beauty? No man in England knew better than the archdeacon the difference between beauty of one kind and beauty of another kind in a woman's face,—the one beauty, which comes from health and youth and animal spirits, and which belongs to tho miller's daughter, and the other beauty, which shows itself in fine lines and a noble spirit,—the beauty which comes from breeding. What you say does you very much honour indeed,' said the archdeacon.—' I should not mind at all about being poor,' said Grace.—' No; no ; no,' said the archdeacon.— 'Poor as we are,—and no clergyman, I think, ever was so poor,—I should have done as your son asked me at once, if it had been only that, because I love him.'—' If you love him you will not wish to injure him.'—' I will not injure him. Sir, there is my promise.' And now as she spoke she rose from her chair, and standing close to the archdeacon, laid her hand very lightly on the sleeve of his coat. There is my promise. As long as people say that papa stole the money, I will never marry your son. There.'—Tho archdeacon was still looking down at her, and feeling the slight touch of her fingers, raised his arm a little as though to welcome the pressure. Ho looked into her eyes, which were turned eagerly towards his, and when doing so was quite sure that the promise would bo kept. It would have been sacrilege—he felt that it would have been sacrilege—to doubt such a promise. He almost relented. His soft heart, which was never very well under his own control, gave way so far that ho was nearly moved to tell her that, on his sou's behalf, ho acquitted her of the promise. What could any man's son do better than have such a woman for his wife? It would have been of no avail had he made her such offer. Tho pledge she had given had not been wrung from her by his influence, nor could his in- fluence have •availed aught with her towards the alteration of her purpose. It was not the archdeacon who had taught her that it would not be her duty to take disgrace into the house of the man she loved. As ho looked down upon her face two tears formed themselves in his eyes, and gradually trickled down his old nose. 'My dear,' he said, if this cloud passes away from you, you shall come to us and be any daughter.' And thus he also pledged himself. There was a dash of generosity about the man, in spite of his selfishness, which always made him desirous of giving largely to those who gave largely to him. He would fain that his gifts should be the bigger, if it were possible. He longed at this moment to tell her that the dirty cheque should go for nothing. He would have done it, I think, but that it was impossible for him so to speak in her presence of that which moved her so greatly. He had contrived that her hand should fall from his arm into his grasp, and now for a moment he held it. 'You are a good girl,' he said—' a dear, dear, good girl! When this cloud has passed away, you shall come to us and be our daughter.'—' But it will never pass away,' said Grace.—' Let us hope that it may. Let us hope that it may !' Then he stooped over her and kissed her, and leaving the room, got out into the hall and thence into the garden, and so away, without saying a word of adieu to Mrs. Roberts. As ho walked across to the Court, whither he was obliged to go, because of the chaise, he was lost in surprise at what had occurred. He had gone to the parsonage hating the girl, and despising his son. Now, as he retraced his steps, his feelings wore altogether changed."

That is a perfect piece of truth and nature. What are we to do,—what are we to do, without the Archdeacon? Mr. Trollope dare not bereave us of the Archdeacon.

The minor excellencies of the story are far too numerous even to mention. We must say we think better of Mr. Trollope as an artist for making Lily Dale turn out a spinster. There is some- thing anticipative of that fate even in her very way of falling in love at first, still more of her demeanour after the disappointment. And throughout this story, her whole manner, intense and prononce without clingingness, has foretold the 0. M. which she affixes to her name in the secrecy of her chamber. And yet (fools and blind that we were!) we believed till the very close that John Eames was to have her, and were proportionately relieved at the result. We have never cared very much for Lily Dale. Her character never interested us deeply after the first blow which deprived her of her lover. It knotted itself and stiffened off from that point. But then we have never cared very much, again, for John Eames, and there is always something unsatisfactory in seeing two persons you do not care for disposed of together in marriage. You resent marriage in such a case as an event which ought to be re- served for those who have the power to interest you. The vulgar people, as usual, are as good as the highbred and refined in the Last Chronicle of Barset. Madalina's last interview with John Eames, when her mother tries to bully hint into a promise of

marriage by locking him up till she can consult her cousin the Serjeant, and when Johnny begs a policeman to keep his bull's eye fixed on the room till he is released, and Madalina finally inter- venes with, " Let him go, mamma, we shall only have a rumpus," is one of Mr. Trollope's best scenes of vulgar life. Of its own light kind there has been no better novel ever written than the Last Chronicle of Barset.