' CASTERBRID GE' 271 



through the town, with the square tower of St. 

 Peter's and the spiky clock-tower of the Town Hall 

 cresting the view^ in High West Street, and in High 

 East Street the modern Early English spire of All 

 Saints nearer at hand. The particular one among the 

 many bridges and culverts that carry the rivulets 

 under the road here, mentioned by the novelist in his 

 Mayor of Casterhridge as the spot where Henchard, 

 the ruined mayor, lounged in his aimless idleness, 

 amid the wastrels and ne'er-do-weels of Casterbridge, 

 is the bridge that finally brings the road into the 

 town, by the old ' White Hart Inn.' It is the inevi- 

 table lounging-stock for Dorchester's failures, who 

 mostly live near by at Fordington, the east end of the 

 town, where the ' Mixen Lane ' of the story, ' the 

 mildewed leaf in the sturdy and flourishing Caster- 

 bridge plant' was situated. 



It is a transfigured Dorchester that is painted by 

 the novelist in that story ; or, perhaps more exactly, 

 the Dorchester of fifty years ago. ' It is huddled all 

 together ; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees, 

 like a plot of garden-ground by a box- edging,' is 

 the not very apt comparison with the tall chestnuts 

 and svcamores of the survivino- avenues. ' It stood, 

 with regard to the wide fertile land adjoining, clean- 

 cut and distinct, like a chess-board on a green table- 

 cloth. The farmer's boy could sit under his barley- 

 mow and pitcli a stone into the window of the town- 

 clerk ; reapers at work among the sheaves nodded to 

 acquaintances standing on the pavement corner ; the 

 red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer, 

 pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated 



