Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/70

 66 as with eternal punishment, but to be content, as Jane Austen was content, with telling a story, perhaps that story might be no unworthy successor of those matchless tales which are our refuge and solace in these dark days of ethical and unorthodox fiction.

There is a great deal of charming conversation, which is not as well known as it should be, in the best novels of Anthony Trollope. He gives his characters plenty of time and opportunity to talk, without forcing them into arbitrary channels; and occasionally, as with Mrs. Proudie and Archdeacon Grantly, and Lady Glencora, he persuades them to let us know exactly what kind of people they are. Above all, there is such an air of veracity about his causeries that the most skeptical reader listens to them without a shadow of doubt. Who can ever forget Bertie Stanhope intimating to Bishop Proudie that he had once thought of being a prelate himself, or Lady Glencora's midnight confidences to Alice, or that crucial contest between Dr. Tempest and Mrs. Proudie! What pleasant wrangling goes on in Mrs.