RETURN OF THE NATIVE, The (1878), one of the masterpieces of Thomas Hardy and perhaps the best of all his earlier novels, deals with the people in the very centre of his favorite land of The scene never leaves Egdon Heath, and on this sombre uniting of various real places in the south of England, somewhat to the west of the Isle of Wight, a very intense tragedy is enacted. It is conceived on classic lines, and is simple, clear and fateful. It is a story of the interruption of and sinister effect upon the ordinary life of the people caused by acts of will and wilfulness. Eustacia Vye, one of the most perfectly'deline ated women in modern English fiction, wishing relief from the ennui of the restricted life on the heath seeks divei ',ton in the admiration of Wildeve, but seeing a chance for positive escape in the return from Paris of the "native," Clym Yeobright, marries him, only to find herself, on the threatened loss of his eyesight, the wife, not of a Paris jeweler, but a day laborer on Egdon. Attempting to flee with Wildeve, both
are drowned on the edge of the heath. Mean while the course of these events has marred the life of Thomasin, Wildeve's wife, has es tranged Yeobright from his mother, and caused the death of the latter. As in many of Hardy's works the wilfulness of one character like a kind of fate operates to disturb and ultimately to upset the lives of several people, and only when Eustacia finally involves herself in the general ruin does life resume its normal though altered course. The tragedy is an extremely vivid and powerful one, although severely localized. It is very richly set in the back ground of local customs, habits and characters, all of which are given an extranrdinextraordinaryunity and impressiveness through the dominance of Egdon Heath.