apt to scare off those who lack perseverance and who fail to
understand that there must be something admirable in that which
was once much admired by the judicious. He shares with Thackeray
the sinful habit of pulling up his readers with a wrench by
reminding them that what is set before them is after all mere
fiction and that the characters in whose fates they are becoming
interested are only marionettes. With Dickens and others he
shares the custom, so irritating to us of to-day, of ticketing
his personages with clumsy, descriptive labels, such as, in
_The Three Clerks_, Mr. Chaffanbrass, Sir Gregory Hardlines,
Sir Warwick West End, Mr. Neverbend, Mr. Whip Vigil, Mr. Nogo and
Mr. Gitemthruet. He must plead guilty, also, to some bad ways
peculiarly his own, or which he made so by the thoroughness with
which he indulged in them. He moralizes in his own person in
deplorable manner: is not this terrible:--'Poor Katie!--dear,
darling, bonnie Katie!--sweet, sweetest, dearest child! why, oh,
why, has that mother of thine, that tender-hearted loving mother,
put thee unguarded in the way of such perils as this? Has she not
sworn to herself that over thee at least she would watch as a hen
over her young, so that no unfortunate love should quench thy
young spirit, or blanch thy cheek's bloom?' Is this not
sufficient to make the gentlest reader swear to himself?

Fortunately this and some other appalling passages occur after
the story is in full swing and after the three Clerks and those
with whom they come into contact have proved themselves
thoroughly interesting companions. Despite all his old-fashioned
tricks Trollope does undoubtedly succeed in giving blood and life
to most of his characters; they are not as a rule people of any
great eccentricity or of profound emotions; but ordinary, every-