be submitted to the test of philosophical speculation; they rest on the conviction of conscience and the heart, a proof far more sublime than may ever be elicited by the ingenuity of man, or the workings of his sovereign reason.

FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.

"I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee."

Midsummer Night's Dream.

ASTR. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly? I fear Evelyn has clipped your sylphid wings, and made a mortal of you.

CAST. Your finger on your lips, Astrophel; for the world, not a syllable of confession to Evelyn.

I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of fairies streaming up to earth from elf-land, in fear of libels on their own imperial sovereignty by this matter-of-fact scholar.

ASTR. Why did we listen to his philosophy? why not still believe the volumes of our antique legends, that those which tell the influence of fairies and demons on man's life have their source in the real history of a little world of creatures more ethereal than ourselves? Perhaps even the bright thoughts of a poet's fancy are not his own creation.

CAST. We must hear no more, although Evelyn will still convert syrens into rocks and trees, and make a monster out of a mist or a thunder-cloud. The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze, creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to conjure the phantoms of romantic creatures. Evelyn is far away among the rocks; let us steal the moment to revel in our dreams of faëry. Even now, are we not in a realm of Peristan? Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet,

strewed with pearls and gold, may be the presencechamber of Titania, and fays are dancing within their ring, which the silvery beech o'ercanopies so shadily; and the chanting of their viralays, or green-songs, comes like the humming of a zephyr's wing flitting o'er the mouth of a lily. Ariel is lying asleep in her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, and the fays are feeding on their fairy-bread, made of the pollen of the jasmine; and Oberon quaffs to his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip of the violet, or glitter in the honeyed bell of the hyacinth, or that purest crystal of the lotus, that brings life to the fainting Indian in the desert, or the liquid treasure of the nepenthe.

We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the humour, the infancy of bright and dark spirits, for you have dipped deep, I know, into the Samothracian mysteries.

ASTR. Know, then, that the birthtime of mythology and romance was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modern history and biography; indeed, the romance of the moderns was with the ancients truth. They had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, and that they might perchance meet them in the groves and hills, which were consecrated to their worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of their names and nature, recorded in the pages of the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed letter on the papyrus.

From the climes of the sun came the Orient tales of genie, and deeves, and peris; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad from Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the promised houris of Mohammed's paradise, and its mys

teries were echoed to us from the lips and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance cradled and bosomed in religion.

From the legends of the East spring the fairy romances of our own days. The Peri of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the Ginn of Arabia was of Ginnistan, and the Fairy of England of Fairy land; and we have their synonymes in the Fata of Italy and the Duerga of northern Europe.

These spirits of romance are almost innumerable, for thus saith the "Golden Legend :" that "the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre."

The alchymist Paracelsus asserts that the elements were peopled with life, the air with sylphs and sylvains, the water with ondines, the earth with gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. And Martin Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master Cross, of Bristol, illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an animated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint, a seeming inorganic mass?

The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, of the Celtic, Scaldic, and Runic mythology, assert that the duergas or dwarfs, which are the Runic fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of the giant Ymor, slain, according to the Edda, by Odin and his brother; and Spenser has left a very interesting genealogical record of the faëry brood in that romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age, the "Faëry Queen." Elf, the man fashioned and inspired by Prometheus, was wandering over the earth alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis he discovered a lady of marvellous beauty-Fay. From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prow

ess of their heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden wall round the city of Cleopolis; Elfine conquered the Gobbelines; Elfant built Panthea of purest crystal; Elfan slew the giant twins; and Elfinor spanned the sea with a bridge of glass.

CAST. Spenser, I presume, borrowed his romance from Italy. We read that the rage and party spirit of the potent Guelphs and Ghibellines rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were wont to frighten the children into obedience with these hated names, which, corrupted to the epithets of elf and goblin, were henceforth applied to fairies and phantoms.

ASTR. This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere the period of these feuds of party, the term Elfen (and Dance identifies this with the Teutonic Helfen) was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits; Weldelfen were their dryads, and Zeld-elfen their field fairies, &c.

The American Indians, to this day, have faith in the presidencies of spirits over those lakes, trees, and mountains, and even fishes, birds, and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The Orient Indian, too, at this hour, peoples the forest with his gods; and peacocks, and squirrels, and other wild creatures are thus profanely deified.

The legends of later days have quaintly blended the classic with the fairy mythology. Hassenet tells us that Mercurius was called the Prince of Fairies, and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie; and, in the romance of the Nine Champions, Proserpine sits crowned among the fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes, in his Natural History, that "you often encounter fairies that vanish away like fantasies." And Baxter believed that “fairies and goblins might be as common in the air as fishes in the sea."

As the Peri could not enter paradise in consequence of the errors of her "recreant race," so the elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying a Christian; and on this plea they came up to the daughters of men: and we read in the tenets of the Cabala that by these earthly weddings they could enjoy the privileges and happiness of each other's nature. But these unnatural unions were not always happy. There is, in our old chronicles, a tradition of a marriage between one of the counts of Anjou and a fair demonia, which entailed misery and commission of crime on the noble house of Plantagenet.

Now there are appointed times when the influence of the spirit fades for a season. It was the moment of the eclipse among the American Indians and the African blacks; in Ireland it is the feast of the Beltane; in Scotland this immunity came over the mortal life on Hogmany, or Newyear's Eve, and during the general assemblies of these mystic spirits of the world.

In Britain it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of November, and on All-Souls' Day. At these times, indeed, they might be induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freema

sonry.

In Germany on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on the dark mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to their unhallowed haunts.

If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi in Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the gift of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted; but this must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind