on the pedigrees of his subjects with a
somewhat excusable pride, though I must
confess I could not refrain from yawning a
little (nor has another person been able to
refrain from doing the like more recently, I
dare say) at the somewhat tedious dissertations
on magical etymology into which he
was led. The ancient man would seem to
have been imbibing deep draughts from
the founts of Junius, Ménage, Casaubon,
Skinner, Minshew, Lemon, and the venerable
cohort of old English etymologists, to say
nothing of Thomson, Whiter, Fox Talbot, and
the moderns. Now the study of etymology
produces nearly the very same effects that Doctor
South ascribes to the study of the Apocalypse:
"It finds a man mad, or leaves him
so;" and, moreover, as the study of Magic has
led to not a few commissions de lunatico, it is
probable that the old Magician I had been
listening to had a "bee in his bonnet," or
as is more vernacularly expressed in this part
of the country, that he had "a tile off," or
"eleven pence half penny out of the shilling."
It may be, and is as probable, that
he was sane; it may be that he never
existed save in my brain; yet he may be sitting
opposite to me still, graving, didacticising
upon the former glories and present decay of
Magic.

Yes, its decay. The state of that once
glorious and potent science is now far more a
Case of Real Distress than that of Queen Mab
and her elves. They at least can obtain
engagements in the pantomimes and Easter
spectacles. Doctor Arne's deathless music yet
summons them to dance on yellow sands and
there take hands. Music-sellers yet deem them
worthy as subjects of delicately-tinted
lithographic title pages to polkas. There are yet
to be found publishers (though few alas!)
who will invest capital in the illustrations,
editing, and publishing of fairy tales; and
till Mr. Richard Doyle he die, and till Messrs.
Leech, and Hablot Browne, and Tenniel, and
especially Mr. George Cruikshank, masters of
the pencil and etching point, they die, we
shall not lack cunning graphers of the life,
and light, and glories of Fairyland. But
Magic is dead. Its professors never sought
to insinuate themselves blandly into the
imagination like the fairies; they brought neither
honied words, nor sparkling pictures, nor
dulcet music. They sought but to control, to
terrify, to destroy. Read the Arabian Nights
through, and perhaps with the single exception
of Cassim Baba quartered in the
robbers' cavern you will not find an incident in
that vast collection of fairy tales that will
excite terror or disgust; but glance over the
awful Malleus Mallificarum as printed on the
eve of Saint Catherine, Queen, Virgin, and
Martyr, in the last decennary of the fifteenth
century—pore over its dusky, black-lettered
pages, its miniated capitals, and shudder;
turn over the Dictionnaire Infernal of Colin
de Plancy, the Histoire de la Magie of Jules
Garinet; peep fearfully into the mysterious
tomes of Piccatrix, Cornelius Agrippa, of
Delrio and Remigius, of Glanvill and Sinclair;
think of the legendary volume of Thomas the
Rhymer, that was "lost, lost, lost," and "found,
found, found," in the lay of the Last
Minstrel;—study these monstrous books—
monstrous alike in form and contents—study
them in the dead of the night (if you have
nerve enough), and sleep afterwards,
nightmareless, if you can.

Magic! It is associated with cruelty,
ignorance, brutish stupidity, and brutal wrong
through all time. It recalls the ages of darkness,
persecution, havoc, and intolerance.
It recalls poor maniacs, brooding over forges
and alembics, cowering amid stuffed monsters
and noxious elixirs, mumbling incoherent
blasphemies over the entrails of dead beasts,
and the skins of dried reptiles. It recalls the
mummeries of the Rosicrucians, the
laboriously idle speculations of Dee and Lilly,
the impudent impostures of Romish priestcraft
in the worst ages of Romecraft; it
recalls with terror and horror the appalling
buffooneries of witchcraft, the horrible
merriment of the Witches' Sabbath, and with
more terrible and horrible reality it brings
back, to our lasting shame and disgrace, the
long long record of aged, maimed, blind,
infirm old creatures, chased, scourged,
imprisoned, tied hand and foot and drowned,
hanged and burnt unjustly, and condemned
too by learned English judges. It recalls
dirty gipseys, and heartless swindlers, dwelling
in back garrets with mangy cats and
greasy packs of cards.

No; I am not sorry that Magic is in
distress; but I grieve more than ever (if that
be possible) for Queen Mab and the fairies,
flouted and contemned by this sometimes and
somewhat too dully practical age.

TOO LATE.

"Here, take these knots and this letter
for him," said Amalie in a broken voice to
me, as I sat in the sledge already prepared
for departure. "May your journey be fortunate
and speedy!" Petro, lashing on his
horse, covered me with a shower of snow;
and, in a few minutes, I had St. Petersburg
behind me. Before me was a snowy wilderness.

Whither did I speed? Across the frozen
region of Siberia to Ochotsk, and to the exiled
friend of my youth. Quicker, Petro; quicker
through this comfortless and deathlike
region. See! There are tracks of a panther;
the horse scents them; how it trembles! So,
we are in Tobolski.

A half sun arises. The white plain lies
before me, glittering with millions of crystals.
A few stunted pine trees throw ghostly
shadows across the white waste, their borders
tinted with the red beams of the sickly sun.