approaching ever nearer and nearer to the goal when-not the proud, not the cunning, not the tyrant-but the just and wise and meek shall inherit and rule in the earth.

FAIRIES.

Since when have fairies existed, and how did they come into being?

If we use the word in its widest sense, merely as representing imaginary forms without tangible existence, we must go back to the world's childhood to discover their genesis.

As long as there has been the darkness. of night and the mystery of moonlight, the secret forest and the hidden waterfall, the mountain cave and the "dismal swamp," so long has the earth been peopled by the imagination with gods and devils, giants and dwarfs, hobgoblins and gnomes, genii and spirits.

These have been suggested partly no

doubt by the occasional monstrosities seen in life, but chiefly by the secret powers of nature and the qualities, good and bad, that exist in the hearts and influence the destinies of human beings.

But if we think of fairies in the modern sense as beautiful or grotesque little beings of human form, dancing on the green-sward and hiding in the flowers; or speeding through the air on some benevolent or, it may be, mischievous errand, the fairies of Hans Anderson, of Sir Noel Paton, of Mrs. S. C. Hall, then I am glad to have the authority of Charles Lamb for the statement that they are the creation of Shakespeare.

They were created perhaps not entirely out of nothing, but we seek in vain in English or Saxon mythology for any pre

cursors of these exquisite embodiments of everything that is fanciful and fascinating.

"The fairies of folk-lore," if we may borrow the words and rest on the authority of Mr. Harry Furness, "were rough and repulsive, taking their style from the hempen home-spuns who invented them."

The pretended fairies in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" may be akin to them, but those of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are of completely

different race.

There are indeed suggestions in the mythology of the Bretons and in the Pantheon of the Gauls of the modern world of fancy, but the thought which gave birth to the "let there be" of Shake

speare's fairy-land, had its origin in the nymphs and fauns, the naiads and dryads of Greece.

They had slumbered long, these exquisite inhabitants of the Athenian woods, resting within the covers of dingy volumes, wrapped in the crabbed letters of an unknown tongue, but at last they had been set free, with all their human contemporaries of classic fame, to preside over the birth and help in the development of our English drama.

How much Shakespeare owed to the spirit and the inspiration of the Greek writers we have learned at last from Dr. Collins' careful research.

But even these beautiful fancies were not imitated by our dramatist, but recreated by the magic of his genius, so