The words Milton used have lost edge in today’s speaking, I notice by observing afresh the above. We do not feel as Milton did, the full, far ring of their meaning. We use a lot of words we partially sense, instead of few we sense in entirety. When I read books of English writers of long ago I have sensation of handling bright, crisp coins. The words of Milton are large, clear, round, beautiful. The story of the youth of England as Hardy depicts it is story of martyrdom transferred from Rome to Victorian England. It is not easy to believe it could have changed so since _Merrie England_. This, joy-destroying puritanism is as out of reason as licentiousness. Fate strikes in the Hardy novels with inexorableness of Greek tragedy. Did he learn this from life? Or did he imbibe it as rule of creation from careful, classical training? The physical world Hardy shows is lovely. The spiritual world is stern and life difficult, where natural right wears garb of wrong. Hardy believes in fickleness of women. To him they remain Biblical characters, creatures under a curse, workers of woe, whom he has seen at a distance and not well. He lavishes phrases upon them, careful meticulous description, but still he does not paint them understandingly. Only a _roué_ could do that, who had found favor with them, and who knew their hearts. I do not believe he admired women greatly, except those whom he created to suit himself, and only fleetingly then, as one admires, then regrets, beautiful glass which is broken. Hardy has seen life and judged it, in light of the puritan Scriptures. In conversation among workers on thriving Wessex farms, men of the field, forest, there is something Shakespearian. There again is the tough, dependable fibre of England, England of conquest. And no one has loved better than he its fields, spring-time and harvest; and its brave, mist-covered, protecting sea. How many dawns, how many sweet noons of summer, he has patiently watched it, or observed with critical eyes of connoisseurship, then loved it deeply! His sense of humor must not be neglected. Not kindly American humor be it said, nor brilliant, crackling Irish humor, like hoar frost on clear, thin crystal, but one that is English, like an English sun, shining persistently (which is the habit of suns), but, never burning with brightness, something, however, we ought to be grateful for, because of reliability, as English people are grateful for niggard, hard-fought living. The happiness, grief, discreet merriment of his stories are framed just as the life of England is framed, against background of ancient churches. They are a series of pictures within eloquent curves of mullioned, Gothic windows.