y's
women, for the reason that they are so charmingly feminine.

One may fancy that Hardy took great delight in his architectural work,
for it required many excursions to old churches in Dorsetshire to see
whether they were worth restoring. When he was thirty-one Hardy
decided to abandon architecture for fiction. His first novel,
_Desperate Remedies_, was crude, but it is interesting as showing the
novelist in his first attempts to reveal real life and character. His
second book, _Under the Greenwood Tree_, is a charming love story, and
_A Pair of Blue Eyes_ was a forerunner of his first great story, _Far
From the Madding Crowd_. It may have been the title, torn from a line
of Gray's _Elegy_, or the novelty of the tale, in which English
rustics were depicted as ably as in George Eliot's novels, that made
it appeal to the great public. Whatever the cause, the book made a
great popular hit. I can recall when Henry Holt brought it out in the
pretty Leisure Hour series in 1875. Three years later Hardy produced
his finest work, _The Return of the Native_. He followed this with
more than a dozen novels, among which may be mentioned _The Mayor of
Casterbridge_, _The Woodlanders_, _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_, and
_Jude the Obscure_.

In taking up Hardy one should begin with _Far From the Madding Crowd_.
The story of Bathsheba Everdene's relations with her three lovers,
Sergeant Troy, Boldwood and Gabriel Oak, moves one at times to some
impatience with this charming woman's frequent change of mind, but she
would not be so attractive or so natural if she were not so full of
caprice. His women all have strong human passion, but they are
destitute of religious faith. They adore with rare fervor the men whom
they love. In this respect Bathsheba is like Eustacia, Tess, Marty
South or Lady Constantine. Social rank, education or breeding does not
change them. Evidently Hardy believes women are made to charm and
comfort man, not to lead him to spiritual heights, where the air is
thin and chill and kisses have no sweetness.

In his first novel Hardy lightened the tragedy of life with rare
comedy. These comic interludes are furnished by a choice collection of
rustics, who discuss the affairs of the universe and of their own
township with a humor that is infectious. In this work Hardy surpasses
George Eliot and all other novelists of his day, just as he surpasses
them all in such wholesome types of country life as Giles Winterbourne
an