[Aranel]

I suppose I will only be repeating the opinion of others,but I have to put my two cents in. *l*
I agree that things seem very different in The Hobbit.I have thought about the difference between the elves in that book and in LotR.It doesn't make sense to me that they had grown melancholy over the fact that time was nearing an end,because it was less than a hundred years between Bilbo's visit and Frodo's.That's nothing to an elf.And though it's a good argument about Tolkien not knowing what the Ring was when he wrote The Hobbit,he must have,because He had begun work on The Silmarillion decades before he wrote The Hobbit,and laid out the basic thought for the Ring then.

So here's my theory,ignoring reality and looking at it from the view point of Middle-earth.

First of all,as the Shadow deepend,it would have been very troublesome to the elves,more so than to other cultures before the effects could be seen.Because of their sensitivity to evil and nature,they would have marked the change.It may not have been so strong in Bilbo's time.Golum had the Ring and no one had heard of it since he found it and took off with it to the mountains.Though I imagine Elrond knew something was stirring in the time of Bilbo's first journey to Imladris,the Ring was still unfound.

I imagine that the musings of a very amateur lover of Middle-earth may not interest anyone,I had a darn lot of fun writing this post. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]