born and bred among the orchards.'

Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort with an air of
unconsciousness which is fascinating.... It may be a sunset, or it may
be only a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair, or the light
from lanterns penetrating the shutters and flickering over the ceiling
of a room in the early winter morning,--no matter what the
circumstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in
permanent colors, made indelible and beautiful.

Hardy's art is tyrannical. It compels one to be interested in that
which delights him. It imposes its own standards. There is a rude
strength about the man which readers endure because they are not
unwilling to be slaves to genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but
little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined
to question the existence of poetry in cows; but if you read _Far from
the Madding Crowd_ you can never again pass a flock of sheep without
being conscious of a multitude of new thoughts, new images, new
matters for comparison. All that dormant section of your soul which
for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep is
suddenly and broadly awake. Read _Tess_ and at once cows and a dairy
have a new meaning to you. They are a conspicuous part of the setting
of that stage upon which poor Tess Durbeyfield's life drama was
played.

But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in his reader's face. These
things are distinctly means to an end, not ends in themselves. He has
no theory to advance about keeping bees or making cider. He has taken
no little journeys in the world. On the contrary, where he has
traveled at all, he has traveled extensively. He is like a tourist who
has been so many times abroad that his allusions are naturally and
unaffectedly made. But the man just back from a first trip on the
continent has astonishment stamped upon his face, and he speaks of
Paris and of the Alps as if he had discovered both. Zola is one of
those practitioners who, big with recently acquired knowledge, appear
to labor under the idea that the chief end of a novel is to convey
miscellaneous information. This is probably a mistake. Novels are not
handbooks on floriculture, banking, railways, or the management of
department stores. One may make a parade of minute details and
endlessly wearisome learning and gain a certain credit thereby; but
what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a
dic