Mr. Hardy's work as an ecclesiastical architect laid the real foundations of his success as a novelist; for it gave him an intimate familiarity with the old monuments and rural life of Wessex, and at the same time that eye for precision of form that is so noticeable in all his books. He has really never ceased to be an architect. Architecture has contributed largely to the matter and to the style of his stories. Two architects appear in his first novel. In _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ Stephen Smith is a professional architect, and in coming to restore the old Western Church he was simply repeating the experience of his creator. No one of Mr. Hardy's novels contains more of the facts of his own life than _A Laodicean_, which was composed on what the author then believed to be his death-bed; it was mainly dictated, which I think partly accounts for its difference in style from the other tales. The hero, Somerset, is an architect whose first meeting with his future wife occurs through his professional curiosity concerning the castle; and a considerable portion of the early chapters is taken up with architectural detail, and of his enforced rivalry with a competitor in the scheme for restoration. Not only does Mr. Hardy's scientific profession speak through the mouths of his characters, but old and beautiful buildings adorn his pages as they do the landscape he loves. In _Two on a Tower_ the ancient structure appears here and there in the story as naturally and incidentally as it would to a pedestrian in the neighbourhood; in _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ the church tower plays an important part in a thrilling episode, and its fall emphasises a Scripture text in a diabolical manner. The old church at Weatherbury is so closely associated with the life history of the men and women in _Far from the Madding Crowd_ that as one stands in front of it to-day the people seem to gather again about its portal....