Anthony Trollope was not, like `Punch,' a mere interpreter of what was
upmost in the average English mind: he was a beautifully patient and
subtle demonstrator of all that was therein. Reading him, I soon
forget that I am reading about fictitious characters and careers;
quite soon do I feel that I am collating intimate memoirs and diaries.
For sheer conviction of truth, give me Trollope. You, too, if you know
him, must often have uttered this appeal. Very well. Have you been
given `Orley Farm'? And do you remember how Lady Mason felt after
confessing to Sir Peregrine Orme that she had forged the will? `As she
slowly made her way across the hall, she felt that all of evil, all of
punishment, had now fallen upon her. There are periods in the lives of
some of us--I trust but of few--when with the silent inner voice of
suffering'--and here, in justice to Trollope, I must interrupt him by
saying that he seldom writes like this; and I must also, for a reason
which will soon be plain, ask you not to skip a word--`we call on the
mountains to fall and crush us, and on the earth to gape open and take
us in--when with an agony of intensity, we wish our mothers had been
barren. In these moments the poorest and most desolate are objects to
us of envy, for their sufferings can be as nothing to our own.
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