, but rather of a
magnificent design to which everything is subordinated, and by which
everything becomes of enduring import. It is the whole presentation of
the primitive life that really fascinates. What in other hands would
have been mere archaeology is here transformed by quick artistic instinct
and made wonderful for us, and human and full of high interest. The
ancient world seems to have come to life again for our pleasure.

Of a work so large and so coherent, completed with no less perfection
than it is conceived, it is difficult by mere quotation to give any
adequate idea. This, however, may serve as an example of its narrative
power. The passage describes the visit of Thiodolf to the Wood-Sun:

The moonlight lay in a great flood on the grass without, and the dew
was falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled
sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound
to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant
meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a
white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild
cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent. Thiodolf
turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered
hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose
boles grew smooth and silver-grey, high and close-set: and so on and
on he went as one going by a well-known path, though there was no
path, till all the moonlight was quenched under the close roof of the
beech-leaves, though yet for all the darkness, no man could go there
and not feel that the roof was green above him. Still he went on in
despite of the darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him,
that grew greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the turf
grew again, though the grass was but thin, because little sunlight got
to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round about it. . . .
Nought looked Thiodolf either at the heavens above, or the trees, as
he strode from off the husk-strewn floor of the beech wood on to the
scanty grass of the lawn, but his eyes looked straight before him at
that which was amidmost of the lawn: and little wonder was that; for
there on a stone chair sat a woman exceeding fair, clad in glittering
raiment, her hair lying as pale in the moonlight on the grey stone as
the barley acres i