marriage as if he were the great Barchester magnate—the Duke of Omnium himself.
I do not presume to inquire how far such a man represents the prevalent type more accurately than the more ethereal divine of pious lady novelists. The Trollope theory of the archdeacons might be held to confirm Matthew Arnold's description of the Church as an 'appendage of the barbarian'; and the philosophical historian might infer that in the nineteenth century the normal country parson was a very slightly modified squire. Perhaps Trollope's view may be a useful corrective to the study of the ordinary lives in which the saintliness of respectable clergymen tends to be a little over-emphasised; still, it omits or attenuates one element—the religious, namely—which must have had some importance in the character of contemporary divines. And what can we say for the young women who charmed his readers so thoroughly? Vulgar satire in those days was denouncing the 'girl of the period'—the young lady who was chafing against established conventions of all kinds. The young women of Barchester seem to have been entirely innocent of such extravagance. Trollope's heroines are as domestic as Clarissa Harlowe.
