_I fancy you could best find what you need_ _In the Complete Works of the late Charles Dickens._ _I have them here._ SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. _Read them aloud to us._ The Recording Angel reads aloud the Complete Works of Charles Dickens. RECORDING ANGEL (closing "Edwin Drood"). _'Tis Christmas Morning._ SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. _Then must we away._ SEMICHORUS I. OF YEARS (aerial music). _'Tis time we press on to revisit_ _That dear little planet,_ _To-day of all days to be seen at_ _Its brightest and best._ _Now holly and mistletoe girdle_ _Its halls and its homesteads,_ _And every biped is beaming_ _With peace and good will._ SEMICHORUS II. _With good will and why not with free will?_ _If clearly the former_ _May nest in those bosoms, then why not_ _The latter as well?_ _Let's lay down no laws to trip up on,_ _Our way is in darkness,_ _And not but by groping unhampered_ _We win to the light._ The Spirit and Chorus of the Years traject themselves, closely followed by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits and Choruses Sinister and Ironic, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel. There is the sound of a rushing wind. The Solar System is seen for a few instants growing larger and larger--a whorl of dark, vastening orbs careering round the sun. All but one of these is lost to sight. The convex seas and continents of our planet spring into prominence. The Spirit of Mr. Hardy is visible as a grey transparency swiftly interpenetrating the brain of the Spirit of the Years, and urging him in a particular direction, to a particular point. The Aerial Visitants now hover in mid-air on the outskirts of Casterbridge, Wessex, immediately above the County Gaol. SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. _First let us watch the revelries within_ _This well-kept castle whose great walls connote_ _A home of the pre-eminently blest._ The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass. Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of the cells. Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at attention, his face to the wall. At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve, and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they line up against the walls. Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. _Enough!_ SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC. _'Tis more than even we can bear._ SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. _Would we had never come!_ SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.