Cæsar and Cicero. To confess the truth, I mean to read them, but I have not yet got to them; if they had dealt with Gaius Licinius and Appius the Blind, I should doubtless have mastered them before now. But I can bear witness that two very eminent historical scholars, one English and one German, think quite differently of Mr. Trollope's Roman studies from the writer in the Pall Mall Gazette. My English friend held that, notwithstanding some slips in minute scholarship-which might have been avoided if Mr. Trollope had been elected at Trinity-he had the root of the matter in him, that he thoroughly understood the real life of his period and his characters. My German friend --whose remarks I showed to Mr. Trollope to his extreme delight-took the exactly opposite line to the Pall Mall writer; he held that it was just Mr. Trollope's own busy life which enabled him really to enter into the true life of Cicero and his contemporaries. This is indeed hitting the nail on the head; it was because Mr. Trollope had seen a good deal of men and things in England and Ireland and other parts of the world that he was able to understand men and things at Rome also. I know not how it may sound either at Balliol or at Berlin; but nothing is more certain than that Arnold and Grote, simply because they were active citizens of a free state, understood ten thousand things in Greek and Roman history which Mommsen and Curtius, with all their fresh lights in other ways, fail to understand. And, though I have not read Mr. Trollope's Roman books, I have talked enough with him on Roman matters to see that he had read not a little, and that he had made good use of his reading. I dare say he has made slips in detail, but he certainly understood the general state of the case. There was no fear of his thinking that, if a patrician noble married or was adopted into the house of a plebeian noble, he thereby went down into the gutter or mixed himself up with the" canaille." Mr. Trollope had written stories enough to know that, in England also, there is nothing miraculous in a duke marrying the daughter of a baronet or esquire, or in a baronet or esquire marrying the daughter of a duke. For Cicero Mr. Trollope had a genuine

enthusiasm; one might have thought that his life had been given to Cicero and nothing else. It was a subject on which he would harangue, and harangue very well. It was the moral side of Cicero's character, or at any rate of Cicero's writings, that most struck him. Here, he said, was a Christian before Christianity. And certainly that man would be no bad practical Christian who should live according to Cicero's standard of moral duty. I once ventured to whisper, with less knowledge of the subject certainly than Mr. Trollope's, that there was something not quite pretty about the divorce of Terentia and the second marriage with Publilia. But Mr. Trollope did not forsake his friend at a pinch. Terentia had behaved badly about money-matters during her husband's banishment, and to divorce her was quite the right thing.

Mr. Trollope paid me a visit the week before his seizure. I was delighted to have him with me for many reasons, not the least because I wanted to put him on in the geography of Barset and Barchester. I used to chuckle over the names, thinking how lucky the novelist was who had made his shire and his city fit so neatly, as if there really had been Barsætan, as well as Dorsætan and Sumorsætan. (So Macaulay's Bussex rhine"-which I strongly suspect is simply the rhine of Mr. Busick-always suggests an otherwise unrecorded tribe of Saxons, Butseseaxe or Boet-Saxons, most fitting indwellers for that marshy land.) It was perhaps fitting that, in the short time that Mr. Trollope was with me, the only people we had a chance of introducing him to were two bishops, of different branches of the vineyard. In company with one of them, Bishop Clifford of Clifton, I took him over part of the range of hills between Wells and Wedmore, that he might look out on the land of Barset, if Barset it was to be. It is a land that Mr. Trollope knew well in his post-office days; but he was well pleased to take a bird's-eye view of it again. He enjoyed our scenery; but he did not enjoy either our mud or our stiles, and it was pleasant to see the way in which the Bishop, more active than I was, helped him over all difficulties. For then, and even at Rome, Mr. Trollope was clearly not in

his full strength, though there was no sign that serious sickness was at all near. This was on October 25th; the next day he was shown Wells and Glastonbury in due order. He allowed Barset to be Somerset, though certainly Gatherum Castle has been brought to us from some other land. But he denied that Barchester was Wells. Barchester was Winchester, where he was at school, and the notion of Hiram's Hospital was taken from Saint Cross. But I argued with him that, if Barchester was not Wells, at any rate Wells, perhaps along with other places, had helped to supply ideas for Barchester. The constitution of the church of Barchester, not exactly like either an old or a new foundation, and where the precentor has the singular duty of chanting the litany, seemed to imply that ideas from more than one place were mixed together. The little church over the gate could not come from Wells; but it might come from Canterbury as well as from Winchester, or even from Langport within the bounds of Barset. And was it not "Barchester Towers"? and towers are a feature much more conspicuous at Wells than at Winchester. And if the general ideas of Hiram's Hospital came from Saint Cross, the particular notion of woolcombers must have come from Wells, where a foundation for woolcombers with a becoming inscription is still to be seen. But, no; Barset was Somerset, but Barchester was Winchester, not Wells. He had not even taken any ideas from Wells; he had never heard of the Wells woolcombers. Still I cleave to the belief that Mr. Trollope, when he went to and fro in Somerset on behalf of Her Majesty's Post-office, had picked up some local ideas, and had forgotten where he found them.

We had also talk about other matters, among them, as was not unnatural,

about Lord Palmerston. On that subject I could see that Mr Trollope's Liberalism, though very thorough, was more traditional and conventional than mine, and that we looked at things somewhat differently, if only because he was eight years older than I was. I could see that Mr. Trollope felt toward Lord Palmerston as a head of the Liberal party, while to me he was simply the long-abiding deceiver of the

Liberal party. Mr. Trollope, I could see, measured things by the rememberances of an older time than I did. Mr. Trollope had much to say about English interests in Syria, about getting the better of Louis Philippe, and such like, which he clearly knew more about than I did. Only I had a vision that, in this case-perhaps not in this case onlyEnglish interests meant, when there was only a choice between two despots, putting down the less bad despot to set up the worse.

But he seemed a little amaz

ed when I told him that to me Lord Palmerston was simply the consistent enemy of freedom abroad and of reform at home, the abettor of Bonaparte and the Turk, the man who never failed to find some struggling people to bully and some overbearing despot to cringe to. If I was a little dim about Louis Philippe, Mr. Trollope seemed a little dim about those Greek, Roman, and other SouthEastern questions, in which Mr. Gladstone already stood forth as the champion of good, while Lord Palmerston showed himself no less distinctly the champion of evil than Lord Beaconsfield did afterward. It was a curious discussion; it was not so much that Mr. Trollope and I differed about any fact, or in our estimate of any fact, as that each looked at the question from a side which to the other seemed to have very little meaning.

Mr. Trollope left me on October 27th. On November 2d he dined at Mr. Macmillan's at Tooting, where I was staying. He talked as well and heartily as usual. We all knew, as I had known the week before, that he was not in strong health, and that he needed to take some care of himself. But there was nothing to put it into any one's head that the end was so near. The next day came his seizure, and from that day onward the newspapers told his tale.

I said that I would not criticise Mr. Trollope's writings. But I will mention one way only in which they have always struck me. I will not do Mr. Trollope such an ill turn as to compare him with George Eliot, the greatest, I suppose, of all writers of fiction till she took to theories and Jews. It was a wonderful feat to draw Remola; it was a wonderful feat to draw Mrs. Poyser; but for the same hand to draw Romola and Mrs.

Poyser was something more than wonderful; if the fact were not certain, one would deem it impossible. Now assuredly Mr. Trollope could not have drawn Romola, and I do not think that he could have drawn Mrs. Poyser. Yet the characters of George Eliot and the characters of Mr. Trollope have something in common, something which stands in contrast with the characters, for instance, of Dickens. Those of the latter that I know, seem, to me at least, to be forced and unnatural caricatures; if they belong at all to the genus Man, it can only be to the species Cockney. I never came across such people, and I do not wish to come across them. But George Eliot's characters are true to the universal nature of man. We know that her English characters are real; we feel that her Florentine characters must be equally real. So, in a lower walk, it is with Mr. Trollope. If his characters have not the depth of George Eliot's, they have equal truth. We have seen

people like a great many of them, and we feel that we easily might come across people like the others. Mr. Trollope had certainly gone far to write himself

I

out; his later work is far from being so good as his earlier. But after all, his worst work is better than a great many people's best; and, considering the way in which it was done, it is wonderful that it was done at all. I myself know what fixed hours of work are and their value; but I could not undertake to write about William Rufus or Appius Claudius up to a certain moment on the clock, and to stop at that moment. suppose it was from his habits of official business that Mr. Trollope learned to do it, and every man undoubtedly knows best how to do his own work. Still it is strange that works of imagination did not suffer by such a way of doing. That work is now over; the intellectual wheel that has ground for us so much harmless pleasure has stopped. As Cato in his old age looked forward to seeing the fathers of Scipio and Lælius, so I trust it is not sinning against orthodox theology to hope that there may be some place in the economy of things where Tully may welcome the Anthony who has been his zealous champion.-Macmillan's Magazine.

To any one coming direct from all the luxury and beauty of the old Court above, naturally this little cottage room looks small and poverty-stricken, yet there is a pathetic tenderness about it, too, born of a woman's hand-a touch of gentle refinement that shows itself in the masses of old-world flowers, carelessly and artistically put together, that adorn the one table and the two brackets, filling all the tiny apartment with their subtle perfume.

The windows, opening to the ground, are thrown wide open. Outside, the garden lies panting in the sunshine. There is the sad lowing as of many cows in the far distance. All the land lies quivering in its heat. A faint useless little breeze comes lazily into the room, ruffling the ancient curtains that are drawn closely together in a vain effort to exclude the sun.

99 66

MRS. GEOFFREY," ETC.

Poor Mr. Norwood, with a praiseworthy determination to seem quite the contrary, is looking the very picture of misery. He has been dragged from his sanctum and his beloved "Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs," to interview, or rather to be interviewed by, a fashionable young man fresh from town, who, though his nephew, is to him an utter stranger.

Conversation for the last five minutes has been growing more and more languid. Now it threatens to cease altogether. The host is at his wits' end, the fashionable young man is looking distinctly bored. It is therefore with a glance full of rapture, and a nobly suppressed sigh of extreme relief, that Mr. Norwood hears a step upon the gravel outside, that comes quickly nearer.

It is it must be-Monica, to the rescue!

:

Now one of the windows is darkened a figure stepping airily from the bright sunshine beyond to the room within, parts the curtains with both hands, and gazes inquiringly around.

As her glance falls upon the strange young man, it alters from expectation to extreme surprise-not confusion, or embarrassment of any kind, but simple, honest surprise, visitors at the cottage being few and far between, and as a rule exceedingly ill to look at.

The strange young man returns her gaze with generous interest, and a surprise that outdoes her own. For a full half minute she so stands with a curtain held back in either hand, and then she advances slowly.

She is dressed in a gown of Oxford shirting very plain, very inexpensive. It has a little full baby body that somehow suits wonderfully the grave childish face above it with its frame of light brown hair so like the color of an unripe chestnut. Her eyes are blue as the heavens above her; her mouth, a trifle large perhaps, but very serious, and very sweet. One cannot but believe laughter possible to her, one cannot also but believe she has found self-communion on many occasions a solace, and a solemn joy.

"Come here, Monica, and let me make you known to your cousin, George Norwood,'' says her father very proudly. The pride is all concentrated in his daughter. In his soul he deems a king would be honored by such an introduction.

At this, she comes closer, and places a small slim hand in her cousin's.

"I should have known, of course," she says, as though following out a certain train of thought. "I heard you had come to the Court."

"You must be good friends with him, Monica," says Mr. Norwood nervously. "He is your only cousin, you knowexcept Julia."

......

Yes;" she is smiling now=" we shall be friends of course!" Then more directly to the man who is still holding her hand, as though he has act ually forgotten it is in his possession, "As my father likes you, it follows that I shall like you too.

Ah!" says George Norwood, with an answering smile that renders his face

Oh, at that rate!'' says she, smiling again.

Presently as he stands upon the hearthrug, he lifts his eyes and fastens them upon a portrait that hangs above the chimneypiece.

"What a charming face!" he says. "What a complexion-and eyes!"

"Yes, it is lovely! It is my grandmother. Don't you think the mouth and nose like papa's ?"

"The very image!" says George Norwood. He doesn't think it a bit, but seeing she plainly expects him to say it, he does his duty like a man. "It is a perfect face! But the eyesthey are your own surely."

Are they? Do you know I never look at that picture without feeling bitter!" She laughs as she says this in a way that precludes the idea that acrimony of any sort could belong to her. "It was the only thing my grandfather left papa. He made a particular point of it in his will, that it should be given to him. When he had carefully cut him off to a shilling, he bestowed upon him an oil-painting, wasn't it munificent? The eldest son's portion to be a mere portrait! while the second and third