Perhaps Trollope never did a better book than this, for variety and vigour of character drawing.

The masterful wife of Bishop Proudie, the ne'er-do-weel canon's family (the Stanhopes), and others stand out against an interest, not intense but sufficient, of story, a great variety of incident, and above all abundant and lifelike conversation.

For many years, and in an extraordinary number of examples, he fell little below, and perhaps once or twice went above, this standard.

It was rather a fancy of his (one again, perhaps, suggested by Thackeray) to run his books into series or cycles--the chief being that actually opened as above, and continuing through others to the brilliant _Last Chronicle of Barset_ (1867), which in some respect surpasses _Barchester Towers_ itself, with a second series, not quite disconnected, dealing with Lady Glencora Palliser as centre, and yet others.

His total production was enormous: it became in fact impossibly so, and the work of his last _lustrum_ and a little more (say 1877-1882), though never exactly bad or painful to read, was obvious hack-work.