ANTHONY TROLLOPE AND THE CLERGY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—A year or two before his death I was sitting drinking coffee with Mr. Trollope in a pension in the Vosges mountains, and remarked to him (not quite sincerely), " No one has studied the English clergy more accurately than you have." In his bluff way he retorted, " Studied them ! I have studied their stomachs ! " He was writing his autobiography at the time, and unless my memory beguiles me, in that volume he avows that when he described Archdeacon Grantly he had never met an archdeacon, and was much gratified to find that he had described an archdeacon such as corresponded to the ideals of the British public. That the writer of the " Warden" and the "Last Chronicle of Barset" should have so estimated his own limitations throws a pleasing light on the character of this realist who was so capable at times of idealism. His admirers will perhaps not be sorry to hear of this little con-
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