whole, more exceptional than the so-called exceptions. Trollope inclines to make everybody an average specimen, and in his desire to avoid exaggeration inevitably exaggerates the commonplaceness of life. He is afraid of admitting any one into his world who will startle us by exhibiting any strength of character. His lovers, for example, have to win the heroine by showing superiority to the worldly scruples of their relations. The archdeacon's son proposes to marry a beautiful and specially virtuous and clever girl, although her father had been accused of stealing. He thus endangers his prospects of inheriting an estate, though he had, in any case, enough to live upon. Surely some men would be up to such heroism, even though the girl herself hesitates to accept the sacrifice. But, to make things probable, we are carefully told that the hero has great difficulty in rising to the occasion; he has to be screwed up to the effort by the advice of a sensible lady; and even her encouragement would scarcely carry the point, had not the father's guilt been disproved. In this, and other cases, the heroes have all the vigour taken out of them that they may not shock us by diverging from the most commonplace standard. When a hero does something
