How to spoil your children.

I'm one-third into The Duke's Children, the sixth and final novel of the Palliser series. You cannot second-guess Trollope. Lady Mary's lover would appear to be Ferdinand Lopez redivivus (of the 5th novel of the Palliser series), but this seems to be Trollope's way of getting us to believe in his story, to take us far enough off the track so that this new character actually gains strength in our minds by our comparing him with Ferdinand. The daily life in Parliament is a problem for me, because it only appears to slow down the most interesting part of the novel: the lives of the children of the Duke. Anyone out there have more comments about this novel?

I finished the book. The curiosity about who is going to marry whom makes you persevere to the end. The children finally end up mature and well-educated. The virtue of patience is produced in them by the great limitations the Duke's authority sets upon them. For me, the hard part about this novel was the political situations, the horse races, the hunting excursions, all interspersed as rest-stops for the novel's interesting plot. I had to speed read those seemingly extraneous parts.