of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil

BOOK FIFTH: THE DISCOVERY

I. "Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery"
II. A Lurid Light Breaks In upon a Darkened Understanding
III. Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning
IV. The Ministrations of a Half-Forgotten One
V. An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated
VI. Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter
VII. The Night of the Sixth of November
VIII. Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers
IX. Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together

BOOK SIXTH: AFTERCOURSES

I. The Inevitable Movement Onward
II. Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road
III. The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin
IV. Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End,
and Clym Finds His Vocation

"To sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.
I would deceive her,
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind."

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred
may be set down as between 1840 and 1850, when the old watering-place
herein called "Budmouth" still retained sufficient afterglow from its
Georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing attractiveness to
the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland.

Under the general name of "Egdon Heath," which has been given to the
sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various
real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually
one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial
unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices
brought under the plough with varying degrees of success, or planted
to woodland.

It is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose
south-western quarter is here described, may be the heath of that
traditionary King of Wessex--Lear.

July 1895

POSTSCRIPT

To prevent disappointment to searchers for scenery it should be added
that though the action of the narrative is supposed to proceed in the
central and most secluded part of the heaths united into one whole,
as above described, certain topographical features resem