followed by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits
and Choruses Sinister and Ironic, Rumours, Spirit Messengers,
and the Recording Angel.

There is the sound of a rushing wind. The Solar System is seen
for a few instants growing larger and larger--a whorl of dark,
vastening orbs careering round the sun. All but one of these
is lost to sight. The convex seas and continents of our planet
spring into prominence.

The Spirit of Mr. Hardy is visible as a grey transparency
swiftly interpenetrating the brain of the Spirit of the Years,
and urging him in a particular direction, to a particular
point.

The Aerial Visitants now hover in mid-air on the outskirts of
Casterbridge, Wessex, immediately above the County Gaol.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_First let us watch the revelries within_
_This well-kept castle whose great walls connote_
_A home of the pre-eminently blest._

The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole
interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass.
Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of
white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of
the cells. Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at
attention, his face to the wall.

At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve,
and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they
line up against the walls.

Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not
more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Enough!_

SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC.

_'Tis more than even we can bear._

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Would we had never come!_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_Brother, 'tis well_
_To have faced a truth however hideous,_
_However humbling. Gladly I discipline_
_My pride by taking back those pettish doubts_
_Cast on the soundness of the central thought_
_In Mr. Hardy's drama. He was right._
_Automata these animalculae_
_Are--puppets, pitiable jackaclocks._
_Be't as it may elsewhere, upon this planet_
_There's no free will, only obedience_
_To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry_
_That justifies the horridest pessimism._
_Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat_
_A quick but not disorderly retreat._

He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his
Chorus, and by the Sp