[Gorwingel]

I agree, it is a rather tragic story. At the end of it I actually became rather angry, and very sad. But I think the anger and the sadness was because I had grown so connected to the charaters and I really didn't want to say goodbye.

Now going back to the main topic of this thread. I really have to say that we can't really determine if the Fourth Age was really worse because we don't know much about it (Tolkien did write part of The New Shadow, but since he didn't finish it. We really don't know if he actually wanted it to be part of the complete history of ME). I personally don't think that the next ages would really be worse, I just think that they would be different. Like when you talk about the leaving of the elves... Probably most "normal" people in Middle Earth had never seen an elf because there just wasn't that many left. The elves were probably already "history" for many of them. So them leaving ME to go to Valinor probably wouldn't make much difference for them in their daily lives.