Prophet's hope--and we see _the end of that
also!_ And seeing all this, because the air of our watch-tower is so
ice-cold and keen, we neither tremble or blench. The world is deep,
and deep is pain, and deeper than pain is joy. We have seen Creation,
and have exulted in it. We have seen Destruction, and have exulted
in it. We have watched the long, quivering Shadow of Life shudder
across our glacial promontory, and we have watched that drowning
tide receive it. It is enough. It is well. We have had our Vision. We
know now what gives to the gods "that look" their faces wear.

It now only remains for us to return to the familiar human Stage; to
the "Gala-Night, within the lonesome latter years," and be gay, and
"hard," and "superficial"!

That ice-bound Promontory into the Truth of Things has only known
one Explorer whose "Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani" was not the
death-cry of his Pity. And that Explorer--did we only dream of his
Return?

THOMAS HARDY

With a name suggestive of the purest English origin, Mr. Hardy has
become identified with that portion of England where the various
race-deposits in our national "strata" are most dear and defined. In
Wessex, the traditions of Saxon and Celt, Norman and Dane, Roman
and Iberian, have grown side by side into the soil, and all the
villages and towns, all the hills and streams, of this country have
preserved the rumour of what they have seen.

In Celtic legend the country of the West Saxons is marvellously rich.
Camelot and the Island of Avalon greet one another across the
Somersetshire vale. And Dorsetshire, Hardy's immediate home, adds
the Roman traditions of Casterbridge to tragic memories of King
Lear. Tribe by tribe, race by race, as they come and go, leaving their
monuments and their names behind, Mr. Hardy broods over them,
noting their survivals, their lingering footprints, their long decline.

In his well-loved Dorchester we find him pondering, like one of his
own spirits of Pity and Irony, while the moonlight shines on the
haunted amphitheatre where the Romans held their games. He
devotes much care to noting all those little "omens by the way" that
make a journey along the great highways of Wessex so full of
imaginative suggestion.

It is the history of the human race itself that holds him with a
mesmeric spell, as century after century it unrolls its acts and scenes,
under the indifferent stars. The continuity of life! The long, piteous
"ascent of man,"