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TROLLOPE'S NORTH AMERICA.

MR TROLLOPE is among the most amusing and popular of our novelists, and is certainly one of those with whom the great majority of novel readers can most fully sympathise. His plots are easy to follow, and depend on the most ordinary and probable circumstances for their interest; yet that interest is quite sufficient to produce earnest attention to the processes and anxiety for the result. His characters are distinct, sketched with spirit, easy to recognise, and so like the personages of daily life that the reader who cannot enjoy that cheap and pleasurable triumph of criticism which consists in discovering a remarkable resemblance between characters of the fiction and persons of his acquaintance must move in a very dull and very narrow circle. His style of writing is brisk and flowing, assuring us that the author enjoys the work he is engaged in, and fully believes in his own creations. Nothing conciliates more than this; and the wit, often profuse and effective, tells the already sympathetic reader that he is dealing with a man who deserves respect as well as liking. Thus all goes pleasantly between him and his audience-there is no adverse party, of people of difficult tastes who say they don't like Trollope, because he is bitter, or fantastic, or crotchety, or too deep for them, or because he depends on strong sensatious effects, or deals too much in exaggeration, or has written himself out those who are not enthusiastic are not hostile, and a great expectation of pleasure with no predisposition to dissent is sure to be excited by the announcement of a new work by Anthony Trollope.

With such agreeable relations existing between himself and his audience, Mr Trollope lately wrote an account of a trip he made to the West Indies and the Spanish Main. It was received with the favour

that might have been expected-it was light, sparkling, and agreeable; and though it has not gained so many readers, nor impressed them so favourably, as the best of his novels, yet it takes its place among pleasant books of travel. Stimulated by this success, and wishing to diversify his labours by lighter if not more profitable work than that of creation and invention, he has once more crossed the Atlantic, and presented us again with the result of his observations, in much the same style, but with an important difference. Had he written his book two or three years ago, it would have been received as a very agreeable addition to the already numerous pictures of life and manners in America that we possess, and Mr Trollope would have been subject only to the disadvantage which almost any one must labour under who follows in the track of such an observer and such a recorder of his impressions as Charles Dickens. But he writes at a time when our interest for American affairs is fixed) on particulars quite different from those which Mr Trollope excels in recording. It is not the habits and manners of the people, the state of society, the aspect of the various regions embraced by their territory, nor the shifts and vicissitudes of a population of speculators and adventurers in a new country, that now engages attention. To know what voices, amid the senseless clamour that prevails, indicate the real wishes and expectations of the Northern people-to trace the connection between the peculiarities of the political system and the spirit and character of the population-to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious fruits of democracyto discern in the seething crucible of revolution the elements really at work-and to be enabled to form something like a just estimate of Northern officials, troops, generals,

and enthusiasm, these are matters now of primary importance to English readers, and the chapters of Mr Trollope's book which treat of these are by no means so satisfactory as that other portion of his subject which has been thrown entirely into the shade by the magnitude of passing events. What are the real merits of democracy? wherein has it undoubtedly failed? These are the abstract questions which the crisis has thrust into the foreground. What are the chances of any particular solution of the contest, what the relative merits of the opposing troops and generals, what the difficulties of country in which they operate what, in fact, are the circumstances which we have been unable hitherto exactly to appreciate, but which must influence the duration and result of the struggle? These are the questions which we now mainly expect travellers in America to answer. And to say the truth, on many of these heads our information is left much as it would have been if Mr Trollope had never gone to America.

How it was that he came to visit America under present circumstances, Mr Trollope tells us in his introductory chapter. The ambition of his literary life has been, he says, to write a book about the United States. That he intended to write it in the spirit of an advocate, appears from his expressed desire to mitigate what soreness had been left in America by his mother's clever book and other works on Transatlantic society. Thus predisposed, he went to the States heralded by the celebrity due to a very clever and fertile writer, and he became, naturally, and creditably for both parties, the recipient of attentions and applause well bestowed in this case, but more valuable and flattering if the fortunate object did not share them with Mr Edwin James, Commander Wilkes the collapsed naval celebrity, and Benjamin F. Butler, the military professor of ravishing at New Orleans. However, no doubt

VOL. XCII.NO. DLXIII.

Mr Trollope's treatment was such as to dispose him favourably towards his entertainers; and the unfortunate result is, that his advocacy, useless to the North, is damaging to himself. It is useless to the North, because facts too glaring to be hidden, obscured, or explained away by the most zealous advocate, have already affixed to the Federal cause a character which no amount of declamation will avail to change. It is damaging to himself, because he is much too acute an observer not to notice these facts; and between his inability to avoid seeing what is damnatory, and his friendly wish to see only what is favourable, he has contracted a kind of moral squint, which is fatal to the attempt at clear and vigorous representation. This will impair his credit with his English audience; while the voracious vanity of his Northern clients will be far from satisfied with the amount of panegyric which the conscience of the pleader will permit him to award. Moreover, Mr Trollope's affection for the North, though it leads him to take part with it against the South, does not often prejudice him in questions between the North and England.

At the outset, we must dissent from an opinion expressed by Mr Trollope, not only because it shows him to have taken a prejudiced view, but because to agree with him would be to abandon our own convictions on a point which is of greater importance than he chooses to think it. He asserts that Secession is "revolutionary ;" and as this term is so vague as to render his meaning obscure, he explains it by saying that Secession has been undertaken and carried on, not in compliance with the constitution of the United States, but in defiance of it. "Nobody," he says, "no single Southerner, can really believe that the constitution of the United States, as framed in 1787, or altered since, intended to give to the separate States the power of seceding as they pleased. It is

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surely useless going through long arguments to prove this, seeing that it is absolutely proved by the absence of any clause giving such license to the separate States." In this argument there are two mistakes so transparent that we may estimate the strength of Mr Trollope's prejudices on seeing a man of his sense fall into them. In the first place, no Secessionist ever argued that the constitution intended to give the States the power of secession. Had the constitution taken upon itself to do anything of the sort, States would have been found-Northern States, too-ready enough to retort that it was superfluous to bestow on them a right which they had never surrendered. Secondly, it must be clear to everybody that a constitution, or any other code or compact, is effective only so far as the powers conferred by it extend, and that an act to be illegal must contravene some of its express provisions. To assert that whatever the constitution does not sanction is illegal, is to call it an abominable despotism. The constitution of the Union sanctions no State rights whatever. It defines its own powers, and forbids the exercise, on the part of the States, of certain rights which they had hitherto enjoyed, but which, for a common purpose, they now agreed to surrender. In the appendix to his book Mr Trollope publishes the constitution of the United States. It seems doubtful whether he ever read it, or, at any rate, whether he read it impartially and attentively-for to guard against any such interpretation of the powers of the constitution as his, amendments expressly provide against the encroachments which would inevitably follow. Article 9 says: "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Article 10 says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,

or to the people." The fact is, that the power which grants a constitution evidently reserves all that it does not concede. When a despot grants a constitution, the people gain only what privileges he can be prevailed on to yield; and when the peoples of the States formed, by their delegates, the constitution of their union, they retained all power which they did not expressly surrender.

It is often a happy thing for a novelist when he possesses the power of expressing, in a figurative manner, his opinions on subjects akin to the purpose of his novel, or explaining in that way the moral qualities of the personages of his tale, or the relations of the personages to each other and to the incidents which arise. Abstract questions or metaphysical discussions which would have worn a very dry aspect, better suited to a scientific treatise than to a work of amusement, become bright, piquant, and interesting when personified and seen through the medium of familiar imagery. Nor can any harm arise from the practice; for the writer of fiction professes only to present his own ideas; and as he must better know than any one else what is the impression which he wishes to convey, so it is a gain both to himself and the reader that he should be permitted to choose the most forcible and direct method of rendering his impressions. But when this faculty is exercised on matters of real life, on which the author has preconceived notions which he wishes to support, it is of much more questionable advantage. So long as it is confined to its legitimate purpose of giving more prompt and lively expression to the author's views than he could otherwise obtain, it is as justly employed in dealing with matters of fact as with matters of fiction. But directly an argument is founded, not on the original facts but on the metaphorical representation of those facts, all honest discussion is at an end, because the question has been

shifted from the solid basis of reality to the shadowy basis of arbitrary fancy which may bear only a pretended relation to fact. Yet this pretended relation may often be sufficiently plausible to blind the unwary listener to the hocus-pocus by which he is deceived; and the specious advocate of a bad cause in law often founds his chance of success with twelve intelligent jurymen on the employment of this piece of mental legerdemain. The demagogue, too, knows well its value; and indeed, if cleverly done, its success must be great on all occasions when an impression is required for a particular purpose, and when the audience have not time allowed them to analyse the processes by which that impression has been produced. He who uses it falsely places himself in this dilemma, that he is either consciously or unconsciously dishonest; and if unconsciously, he saves his credit for candour at the expense of his judgment. In either case he loses ground with his audience in proportion to the number of these fallacies which are detected; and of course, if arguments of this kind are not spoken, but printed in books, the chances of detecting their inaccuracies are immensely increased. We think that Mr Trollope has committed an error on more grounds than one in resorting to this style of treatment in discussing political questions, as he so frequently does in his book. It is not that we are surprised to find a man of his lively imagination frequently personifying the abstract relations of a question, and we are far from objecting to that. What we do object to is, that having indulged in an arbitrary and inaccurate comparison, he should proceed thereon to ground an argument.

For instance, when he chooses to convey his idea of the position of England with relation to the American quarrel under the guise of the difficulties entailed upon

the friend of Mr and Mrs Jones, when that pair have a connubial

dispute in which each expects to find in him an adherent, we see nothing unfair in it. We do not ourselves find our conception of the case assisted by this familiar mode of putting it; and we should prefer forming a judgment on the actual rather than the imaginary dilemma. Still, there may be people who like to be helped to their decisions in this way; at any rate, there are readers who expect smartness from Mr Trollope, and who may consider it smart to see the American dispute likened to a quarrel between Mr and Mrs Jones; and if this be really the exact figure under which the case presents itself to Mr Trollope, and he only means to give it to his readers for what it is worth, as such we are willing to accept it. And when he makes "Monroe P. Jones the representative of the insatiable rage for speculation of the American frontier man, we have a livelier idea of the passion and its effects than a mere homily would convey. And again, his illustrations of this kind are often very clever and witty, as we should expect from Mr Trollope-as when he tells us :—

"I have found it difficult-I may praises in his own land. Let us supsay impossible-to sound Washington's pose that a courteous Frenchman ventures an opinion among Englishmen that Wellington was a great general, would he feel disposed to go on with his eulogium when encountered on two or

three sides at once with such observations as the following:-'I should rather calculate he was about the first that ever

did live or ever will live. Why, he whipped your Napoleon everlasting whenever he met him. He whipped everybody out of the field. There warn't anybody ever lived was able to stand nigh him, and Sir, I guess our Wellington never had there won't come any like him again. his likes on your side of the water. Such men can't grow in a down-trodden country of slaves and paupers'? Under such circumstances the Frenchman would probably be shut up. And when rally found myself shut up also.” I strove to speak of Washington, I gene

But there are many instances in

which Mr Trollope not only allows his fancy to palm upon him false imagery, but proceeds to draw from it totally false conclusions. In one case he winds up in this way a discussion on the causes of quarrel between North and South: After a plain, though prejudiced, statement of the many differences and grounds of complaint, on coming to the Fugitive Slave Law he suddenly begins to argue the case of a wife who has a drunken husband, and upon this fancied resemblance he proceeds to descant as if it were the real matter in hand. It is disagreeable, he says, to live with a wife who is always rebuking one for a fault; but the outside world will say that if you do not choose to be called a drunkard by your wife, you should cease to drink. If there is to be any divorce on this account, the plea should be put in by the sober wife, not by the intemperate husband. Next, the case is supposed of "the husband taking himself off without any divorce, and taking with him also his wife's property, her earnings, that on which he has lived and his children." All this time the reader who thus looks at facts in Mr Trollope's queer magic-lantern, is left in doubt as to which section of the Republic is typified by the drunken husband. A matter-of-fact man is puzzled to perceive what particular characteristic of either the imputed inebriety is intended to represent. A Southern man would probably interpret the supposed drunkenness as fairly symbolic of the commercial greediness of the North. Mr Trollope, however, supplies us with the key to his parable in one compendious sentence. "The South," he says, "has been the husband drunk with slavery, and the North has been the ill-used wife." Now, we would seriously put it to Mr Trollope whether he thinks advocacy of this kind likely to influence the opinions of men of sense, and, if not, whether it is likely to do himself any service. He puts his readers

in this predicament, that if he has not a very bad opinion of their reasoning powers, they can have no very exalted opinion of his.

In similar style he disposes of the question whether English writers are right in replying to the abuse lavished on England by the advocates of Federalism :

"I make bold," says Mr Trollope, "to place myself and my country on very high ground, and to say that we, the older and therefore the more experienced people as regards the United States, and the better governed as regards France, and the stronger as regards all the world beyond, should not throw mud again, even though mud be thrown at us. I yield the path to a small chimney-sweeper as readily as to a lady; and forbear from an interchange of courtesies with a Billingsgate heroine, even though at heart I may have a proud consciousness that I should not alto

gether go to the wall in such an en

counter.

Q. E. D.

Therefore because Mr Trollope yields the path to a chimneysweeper, and declines to exchange abuse with a Billingsgate heroine, Englishmen ought not to censure American institutions Setting aside the logic of this result, we may doubt whether the North, Mr Trollope's client, will be especially delighted at playing the part of a small chimney-sweeper, or whether a writer who characterises the South as the drunken husband of an ill-used wife is entitled to lecture on the courtesies to be observed in international discussions. And though we have seen many sharp remarks from English pens on Federal institutions and policy, yet we do not remember any instance where "Billingsgate" has been resorted to on our side. We presume that Mr Trollope scarcely means us to infer that he considers it inexcusable in any case to employ sarcasm, ridicule, or invective as controversial weapons. If, as we must needs conclude in the case of a writer who wields light satire so skilfully as Mr Trollope, he allows that their use is consistent with the laws of

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