For _The Dynasts_, which covers the map of Europe, transcends the sky, and deals with world-conquerors, is not nearly so great a world-drama as _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, that is circumscribed in a small corner of a small island, and treats exclusively of a little group of commonplace persons. Literature deals with a constant--human nature, which is the same in Wessex as in Vienna. As the late Mr. Clyde Fitch used to say, it is not the great writers that have great things happen to them; the great things happen to the ordinary people they portray. Mr. Hardy selected a few of the southwestern counties of England as the stage for his prose dramas; to this locality he for the first time, in _Far from the Madding Crowd_, gave the name Wessex, a name now wholly fictitious, but which his creative imagination has made so real that it is constantly and seriously spoken of as though it were English geography. In these smiling valleys and quiet rural scenes, "while the earth keeps up her terrible composure," the farmers and milkmaids hold us spellbound as they struggle in awful passion. The author of the drama stands aloof, making no effort to guide his characters from temptation, folly, and disaster, and offering no explanation to the spectators, who are thrilled with pity and fear. But one feels that he loves and hates his children as we do, and that he correctly gauges their moral value. The very narrowness of the scene increases the intensity of the play. The rustic cackle of his bourg drowns the murmur of the world.