neglected and do neglect is amply compensated by that which they have done and are still doing." "In knowledge our higher [German] schools are far in advance of the English, but their education is more effective, because it imparts a better preparation for life." ROBT. ELLIS THOMPSON.

"GATES AJAR."

"Splendor! Immensity! Rapture! grand words, great things: a little definite happiness would be more to the purpose."-MADAME DE GASPARIN.

OH! sometimes I ask myself can it be true,

All this faith which we cling to and trust in

With courage and joy? Shall I tremblingly rue
In the future unknown, this strong certainty
Bolstering my hopes up on earth? For I, I'm so small,
In the sweep of God's planets; so fearfully lone,

In the rush of the torrents of souls!

Amid all

That I know not, nor care for, nor trust in, shall I,

Just myself as I am, press in at the door

That sweeps open at death and admits me to

"Splendor, Immensity, Rapture," and more

Than my mind can conceive of? But shail this

Be I?

This new wonderful creature? Methinks I had rather Be less of the marvel-effulgent in glittering bliss,

And more of the man who in Heaven could gather

His human ones round him and live without sin as he was!
For how can I love these grand princes and angels,
And all the great creatures who surge out and in
From the worlds that I never have dreamed of?

Oh! God, is it thus? Shall I lose myself there
In the soul dust of lives which are numberless, depths
Which I never can enter? My Father, oh! where
Shall I rest myself, wearied and staggered

With all this sublimity? Oh! is there not by

Thy throne, in which centre the lines of

Creation's far-reaching expanse, the form and the eye
Of the human one, tinging eternity's colorless blank
With the blood drops of time, and making in space
Unsubstantial and airy with cloud-fleece, a firm

And unchanging reality, where I can place
My poor wandering feet close by His feet! Oh! God,
I shall see thee through Christ! I shall cling to that hand
Which was pierced for my sins, and though awed

By the sunburst of infinite light, still my soul
Shall be knit to the human in Jesus! I shall stand
Where the sinning men saved stand: the roll
Of the world's ever moving around me: the flight
Of the surging attendants of spirits, the life of
Eternity dreaded, unknown, shall awake to my sight,

As the feverish dreams turn to joys when the sufferer wakes to the light.
WM. WILBERFORCE NEWTON.

THE KEY TO FAIRYLAND.

THE recent notable progress of our race in geographical knowledge is, at best, but a very partial and one-sided sort of advance. The geographical consciousness of our times is extended and cleared up as regards the prosaic regions that we find on the maps. Kanes and Livingstones are opening the gates of the North and the South, to the ruin of our old imaginations and dreams; but many very important regions are wholly neglected. The last news from Eldorado is as old as Sir Walter Raleigh; the last from Atlantis is recorded by Plato. No one has visited Nephelococcygia since Lucian, and the regions visited and explored by Saint Brandan are wholly neglected. We shall say nothing of Lilliput and Brobdignag, and of the wonderful subterranean regions described by Holberg as visited by Nils Kleim, nor of the Geral Milco, discovered by our own countryman, nor of the wonderful kingdom discovered in Central Africa by Bishop Berkeley's Gaudentia di Lucca, nor of those described by Sir Thomas More in his Utopia. Fairyland is not so utterly neglected, but still it has just reason to complain. The reports of its early explorers have indeed been somewhat numerous, and, in the main, faithfully recorded; but the worst sins of the old geographers were trifles compared with the wrongs done to it by modern books of professed veracity. The orthodox and reliable accounts of travellers thither have been overwhelmed with a deluge of absurd superstitions. The fanciful Pagan mythology of sylphs and gnomes, the grotesque Oriental demonology of djinns and ghouls, the absurdities of the Rosicrucians, and the heavy pleasantries of the French philosophers,* have all been transferred to Fairyland. Every ancient landmark in its geography has been removed; every venerable tradition of its history has been discarded. In their place a whole farrago of phantasms and nightmares, borrowed from all nations, or from no nation, has been palmed off upon the unsuspecting public of the nursery. The French contes des fees are especially blameworthy; but

*Such books as 66 Evenings at Home," "Sandford and Merton," &c., are cases in point.

for the whole period, from the publication of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" to that of Crofton Croker's "Fairy Legends," scarcely an orthodox and veracious work on the subject can be pointed out. The productions of this dark age must be reckoned among the Apocryphal Books, or placed on the Index Expurgatorius of Fairyland, if such there be in that region of shadows.

One single point will enable the unlearned reader to judge infallibly between what is orthodox and what is unsound in these books. The "unhistorical" writers speak of good fairies and of bad fairies-the former as the watchful guardians of infant virtue, and the latter as permitted to bring idle or mischievous youngsters to sorrow. Now, in truth, there is neither good nor bad in Fairyland-that great and eternal line that runs through all human life stops at its frontier. A "good fairy" or a "bad fairy" is a contradiction in terms. There is neither black nor white in that whole region-all is a shifting gray. They are no more amenable to the Ten Commandments than are the squirrels or the grasshoppers. "Too good for banning, too bad for blessing," is the ancient and exact canon of sound judgment in regard to them.

Miss Yonge has justly praised Mr. Croker as the first to bring about a healthier state of public opinion on this subject. Much, however, still remains to be done, and the public have a right to know by what authority any one speaks, who seeks to supplement work of such eminent excellence and authority. The present writer's introduction to Fairyland was at an early age, and of the most orthodox kind. The "good people," as we euphemistically called them when we had to name them, were as firmly fixed in our childish belief as were the angels themselves. The places that they frequented, the times and modes of their appearance, the acts that would offend them, the charms or "freets" that would keep them off, were all as well ascertained in that Ulster nursery as were the facts of the story of Joseph in Egypt or of Daniel in the den of lions. More than one belated neighbor had heard, in crossing a neighboring hill,

* See Miss Yonge's recent article on "Children's Story-Books of the Last Century," in Macmillan's Magazine, (republished in Littell's Living Age, and in Every Saturday.)

their weird and fantastic music as they danced within the magic circle of an old Danish fort; and early visitors to the spot had found the fairy ring, where the grass had darkened under the patter of their tiny feet.* Woe to the luckless urchin who did despite to any leaf of fern, as these were under their especial protection. Let him be sure to say all his prayers that night, and put a bit of the rowan-tree (or mountain ash) into the bedroom keyhole, or it would be worse, for him. Our elders, of course, were skeptics and mockers, or pretended to be; but those of them who had not been well educated hardly ever succeeded in eradicating the faiths of childhood. The servants would check us for speaking of fairies; but in the long winter evenings, which begin in Ulster soon after three o'clock, their own tongues would be unloosed. They would tell how this venerable dame had been startled at seeing a neat, trim little fairy step into her kitchen, and politely request her not to throw her "slops" on a certain stone before the door, "as it all comes down about my family, ma'am;" or, how that staid but "drouthie" farm-laborer had loaned Mr. Fairy his "plow-paddle" (or plow-scraper) to turn loaves in the oven with, and how the tiny, hot loaf he had received in payment had turned to clay when kept past midnight.

The orthodox doctrine of Fairyland, in which we were thus faithfully trained, is that they are a race of beings intermediate between man and the lower orders of animal life. They possess quick intellectual perceptions, but are devoid alike of fixety of purpose, seriousness of thought, and moral character. Their disposition is fickle to the utmost; their power quite sufficient to make it worth while to gain their good-will, or at least to avoid giving them needless offence. They are only persevering in their sprightly malice: he who injures them will be sure to rue it. As the old proverb, already quoted, pithily says: They are "too good for banning, too bad for blessing."

As for Fairyland itself, it lies just below the earth's surface, in the British Islands, a piece of correct information which we herewith offer to the publishers of the next edition of Mitchell's School Geography. We trust that, since the discovery of subterranean communities in Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and

* These fairy rings are actually found, but there is a scientific explana

tion of them.

Southern Africa,* the statement will not be rejected as improbable. The dwellers in the land live in the unseen caves and hollows of the earth, from which they only occasionally sally forth to "revisit the pale glimpses of the moon," and then only when that meddlesome creature, man-whose advances they repel and resent is safely out of the way and asleep. In politics, they are absolute monarchists, some Oberon or Titania being always found at their head; but of the political and social subdivisions of their territory, nothing definite is known. More might have been known by this time had not all our modern travellers been verifying the proverb of the Jewish king: "A fool's eyes are in the ends of the earth."

Ulster is not as rich in kinds and sorts of them as are the other provinces of Ireland, where leprauchan, and many other names, belong to different species of the genus. In the North, one single class stands out distinct from the great mass. Attached to some of the native and older colonial families is a banshee, whose mournful wail gives notice when Death is sweeping down to carry off some member of the family circle. That which performed this friendly office for our family usually appeared in the form of a woman in white.

While thus interested in the departure of human beings to a higher sphere, they have no such hope for themselves. Their lives, indeed, are measured by centuries. Possibly Oberon and Titania may still be lording their midnight revels, and could cast some valuable light on the text of Shakspeare. But at last they die, and death is the cessation of their very existence. Of all that man possesses they covet only the gift of immortality, which they attribute to the grace conferred in Christian baptism. That rite would number them with men, by pronouncing upon them the name of God the Father, and of the Son of God and of To win this great gift for their children, they seek to carry off the new-born "unchristened" human child, and to leave a "fairy changeling" in its place-a mischance against which old gossips take many a precaution, but, tradition says, not always with success. The fate of a child thus spirited off into Fairyland is not an enviable one. He lives, hopeless and godless, in a restless round of sport and amusement, with no immortal life

man.

* The strange report recently received from Dr. Livingstone is referred to.