Complete and unabridged, with 55 full-page plates by John Constable, George Morland and Thomas Cole. Wessex, 1804: Napoleon's army is across the Channel, the beacons are laid, the militia is drilling on the down, and two brothers — a trumpet-major and a sailor — are in love with the miller's daughter. Hardy trained as an architect and restored churches; he built this from the local memories of the invasion scare and from the King's actual visits to Weymouth, and the last line about where the trumpet-major went is one of the quietest endings in English. Fifty-five plates by painters including Constable and Müller follow the mills, downs and Channel light of Hardy's Wessex, 1767 to 1844.