ics of the class to which they belong.
In a regiment famous for its bravery we may unquestionably conclude that
the majority of the rank and file will be brave men; but a few may be
composed of less heroic stuff. Would it be just to take these as the
types of the regiment?

* * * * *

After an unsuccessful attempt to make a home in America, Mrs. Trollope
returned to England, with the world to begin again, a husband
incapacitated for work by ill-health, and children who needed aid, and
were too young to give any. In such circumstances many would have
appealed to the sympathy of the public, but Mrs. Trollope was a
courageous woman, and preferred to rely upon her own resources. She
followed her first book, the success of which was immediate and very
great, by a novel entitled "The Refugee in America," in which the plot
is ill-constructed, and the characters are crudely drawn, but the
writer's caustic humour lends animation to the page. "The Abbess," a
novel, was her third effort; and then, in the following year, came
another record of travel, "Belgium and Western Germany in 1833." Her
Conservative instincts found less to offend them in Continental than in
American society, and her sketches, therefore, while not less vivid, are
much better humoured than in her American book. Some offences against
the "minor morals" incur her condemnation; but the evil which most
provokes her is the incessant tobacco smoking of the Germans, against
which she protests as vehemently as did James I. in his celebrated
"Counterblast."

Three years later she produced her "Paris and the Parisians," of which
M. Cortambret speaks as "crowning her reputation," and as receiving
almost as warm a welcome in France as in England. The character,
customs, and literature of the French furnish the theme of a series of
letters, in which the clever and vivacious writer never fails to charm
even those whom she does not convince. It is curious to read this book,
published in 1836, and to compare the state of society in those days
with that which now exists. What changes, in half a century, have been
wrought in the national character! There seems in the present a certain
dulness, greyness, and indifference,--or is it rather an acquired
reticence and self-control?--which contrast very strikingly with the
feverish, agitated, tumultuous past, so partial to fantastic crotchets,
but so sympathetic also with great doctrines and generous