Batchelors and Maides with his tales have compassed the Christmas fire-block till the Curfew-bell rings, Candle out: the old Shepherd and the young Plow boy af

of the Tales

airs of life. These views are in accord with the Stevenson temperament that looked on life as made up of two worlds: a real workaday one to be unflinchingly faced, no matter what the task that came, and a fanciful one, a play world, that by its appeal to the ideal nature created an atmosphere of joy that made the duties of the real one more tolerable. His own life, so well

t the free abandon of fairy land. Her heart has never leap'd up at beholding a rainbow in the sky, a rainbow with the fabled pot of gold-though she has toiled and sweat many a day for nothing more than a mess of pottage. Whilst pointing the finger of scorn at the magic lamp, the ogre's hen, or the seven-league boots, she plays the fool and pays the fiddler in actual life merely because under it all there lurks a passion for the marvellous, fo

ere we may walk with children sharing their delights." A good thing it is to keep that slender tract free from weeds. And the stronger the man, the more he needs to do it. Only a man who sees things out of their right proportions and who is without a sense of humour would scorn to renew his youth occasionally in the land of romance. If in life the strongest and wisest men are good at a fight, they are still better at a play. And it is no shame if their "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" is more thumbed than their Bacon's "Essays." They may be all the wiser for it. In Howard Pyle's delightful rendering of the Robin Hood tales he gives this happy admonition in the introduction: "You who so plod among serious things that you feel it a shame to give yourself up even

, cock-sure of being able to solve the riddle of existence, strode upon the scene and smote the favourite creatures of the imagination hip and thigh. It not only played havoc with the fairies of our fathers, but it came perilously near doing the same with their faith. And as a result, a material and utilitarian tone has taken hold of education in most places, and boys must be practical, scientific, and wear old heads on young shoulders. This same tendency had begun in the days of Charles Lamb, for he wrote the following protest to Coleridge: "Knowledge must now come to the child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit at his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal and Billy is better than a horse and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales which made the child a man while all t

t he will be kind and true. He will not aim to understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but will aim to make people happy rather than learned. His early experience of the feelings of pity and terror will refine his emotions as much as it did in the age of Thespias those of the Greek youth. In other words, his early fami

keen and boyish interest. The present concern is with a limited number of stories that are so wholly good and so very necessary to the child that he should come to know them completely. Then from this beginning the boy can wander at his own sweet will and keep friends with Jacobs, Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, and, last of all and no doubt best of all, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." But from all of these the rude vigour, the

iry Tales. I am doubtful of my success in catching the colloquial-romantic tone appropriate for such narratives, but they had to be done or else my object, to give a book of English Fairy Tales which children would listen to, would have been unachieved. This book is to be read aloud and not merely to be taken by the eye." All children should rejoice, that, so long after Puritanism had suppressed these tales in many parts of England, and after its decline they had come to be supplanted by the Mother Goose tales of Perrault, there has come such an excellent retelling of them in the Jacobs books. If there be anything in fairy literature better than "Tom Tit Tot," I have not found it. It is altogether fitting to have it stand first in s

tle son, to whom they had been told, rewrote them from memory as an exercise, and the lad's version, being so simple and direct, was given to the world in that form by his father. They slowly found their way into England and for a while supplanted the native tales. There is surely a universal appeal in such stories as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots," and "Sleeping Beauty." The best rendering of these to-day is a

s did Cruikshank. Where can anything better be found than Jack's descent on the harp, the Ogre's flight, or the presentation of the boots to the King? Why then did not Cruikshank make a picture book with pictures only? Why did he leave his last to write the stories anew in order that he might take the opportunity to giv

and the Shoemaker" is the best fairy illustration yet done. These German stories are charming. The contention that the stories are creepy is but the contention of a moralist. It should carry no weight with the teacher who would give the boy artistic notions of beauty, love, and mystery. These notions are always safer than those of cold realism worked out in artificial conduct. Sir Walter Scott wrote in this strain to Edward Taylor in 1832: "There is a sort of wild fairy interest in them which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good boy stories which have in late years been composed for them. In the latter case, their minds are, as it were, put into stocks,

to grown-ups as well as to children-the test of a child's book that is literature, or rather the test of a man yet on good terms with the world. They are somewhat dull, wearisome, and overdone in places and do not stop when the story is ended, as we find in "The Fir Tree"; yet in some way they temper the English and German tales and meet Ruskin's requirement that a child's tale should sometimes be both sweet an

the crowd always begging for just one story more. One might search in vain for a companion volume to this most capital of all books, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The tales are on a bigger scale than are the English and German tales. There is a vastness of desert and starry sky in the tent life of the Arab that is unknown in the cottage life of the English peasant. And this is reflected in the tale that is told. Immensity and Oriental mystery have taken the pla

beginning, "once upon a time," nor yet to omit the best of all conclusions, "and all went well ever afterwards"-neglecting, of course, to add that truism for grown-ups, "that didn't go ill." In this practice of giving a few choice tales through the ear is the preparation for the time when a boy will eagerly thumb a favourite volume of his own in some quiet nook. But a few of the better tales must first have been mastered s

rs of fireside lore. The list that follows has been found good for a limited list, yet as complete a one as a child can master. No apology need be offered for the insertion of Ruskin's great story or the two stories of jungle life by Kipling. They are mo

r, the Glass Slipper," and "The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots" from "The Tales of Mother Goose" as told by Charles Welsh; "Tom Tit Tot," "The History of Tom Thumb," "Jack the Giant Killer," and "Whittington and His Cat" from "English Fairy Tales"; "Beauty and the Beast" and "Hop o' My Thumb" from "The Children's Book"; "Hansel and Grethel," "The Blue Light," and "The Golden Bird" from Taylor's tra

boy will fall into the habit of reading aloud to some one else, and this may now be trusted to carry him along. Wise suggestion on the part of the teacher will direct him in getting a few good volumes that he can call his own. A fairy library, not large but well selected, will become a comfort to him in later years when the lamp is getting dim. For the

nter in a lively green. The possibilities of the daughter of Ceres while she dwells beneath the earth are likewise to be