Though I do not wish in these pages to go back to the origin of
all the Trollopes, I must say a few words of my mother,--partly
because filial duty will not allow me to be silent as to a parent
who made for herself a considerable name in the literature of her
day, and partly because there were circumstances in her career
well worthy of notice. She was the daughter of the Rev. William
Milton, vicar of Heckfield, who, as well as my father, had been
a fellow of New College. She was nearly thirty when, in 1809, she
married my father. Six or seven years ago a bundle of love-letters
from her to him fell into my hand in a very singular way, having
been found in the house of a stranger, who, with much courtesy,
sent them to me. They were then about sixty years old, and had been
written some before and some after her marriage, over the space of
perhaps a year. In no novel of Richardson's or Miss Burney's have
I seen a correspondence at the same time so sweet, so graceful,
and so well expressed. But the marvel of these letters was in the
strange difference they bore to the love-letters of the present
day. They are, all of them, on square paper, folded and sealed,
and addressed to my father on circuit; but the language in each,
though it almost borders on the romantic, is beautifully chosen,
and fit, without change of a syllable, for the most critical eye.
What girl now studies the words with which she shall address her
lover, or seeks to charm him with grace of diction? She dearly likes
a little slang, and revels in the luxury of entire familiarity with
a new and strange being. There is something in that, too, pleasant
to our thoughts, but I fear that this phase of life does not conduce