that he is keenly alive to all the
strong influences of nature on a sympathetic mind, and he is also a
believer in the power of romantic love.

No one has ever equaled Hardy in making the reader feel the living
power of trees and other objects of nature. You can not escape the
influence of his scenic effects. These are never theatrical--in fact
they seem to form a vital part of every story. The scenes of all his
novels are laid in his native Dorsetshire, which he has thinly
disguised under the old Saxon name of Wessex. In _Far From the Madding
Crowd_ Hardy first demonstrated the tremendous possibilities of rural
scenes as a vital background for a story, but in _The Return of the
Native_ he actually makes Egdon heath the most absorbing feature of
the book. All the characters seem to take life and coloring from this
heath, which has in it the potency of transforming characters and of
wrecking lives. And in _Tess_ the peaceful, rural scenes appear to
accentuate the tragedy of the heroine's unavailing struggles against a
fate that was worse than death.

Hardy's parents intended him for the church, but the boy probably gave
some indications of his pagan cast of mind, for they finally
compromised by apprenticing him to an ecclesiastical architect. In
this calling the youth worked with sympathy and ability; the results
of this training may be seen in the perfection of his plots and in his
fondness for graphic description of churches and other picturesque
buildings. One curious feature of this training may be seen in Hardy's
sympathy and reverence for any church building. As Professor William
Lyon Phelps very aptly says of Hardy: "No man to-day has less respect
for God and more devotion to his house."

The antipathy of Hardy to any kind of publicity has kept the facts of
his life in the background, but it is an open secret that much of the
longing of Jude for a college education was drawn from his own
boyhood. It is also a matter of record that as a boy he served as
amanuensis for many servant maids, writing the love letters which
they dictated. In this way, before he knew the real meaning of sex and
the significance of life he had obtained a deep insight into the
nature of women, which served him in good stead when he came to draw
his heroines. All his women are made up of mingled tenderness and
caprice, and though female critics of his work may claim that these
traits are over-drawn, no man ever feels like dissecting Hard