fruit is developed from the flower. To clip
fancy in youth for the sake of getting more
wisdom from age, is about as wise a scheme
of mental culture as it would be wise in agriculture
to pick off the leaves of apple-blossom
in the spring, for the sake of getting monster
apples in the autumn. The mind has its own
natural way of growing, as the body has, and
at each stage of growth it asks for its own class
of food. We injure minds or bodies by denying
either. Just as some people deny fairy
tales to their children, others—or the same—
deny them sugar, which would help their
perfect bodily development, or even the free
supply of milk, which is essential to it. Sugar,
they say, spoils the teeth; milk sits heavy on
the stomach; fairy tales (monstrous delusion!)
make the mind idle and too languid
for other work. The truth being, in the last
case, that they make the mind active, and
indisposed for other work that does not give
it enough exercise.

Let us suppose somebody with different
opinions, who honestly allows himself to be
instructed by the hints- or more than hints
—that nature gives, and admits fairy lore as
an important element in the instruction of
his children. He makes the admission unreservedly,
and forms as perfect a collection as
he can, of the popular fairy tales and legends
of all lands under the sun; of a very great
number, translations already exist. There
are cheap or dear editions of the Indian
fables of Bidpai or Pilpay; there are Persian
Rose-gardens, that have been transplanted
into our language by able scholars; there are
Arabian tales; fables, and legends, that speak
to us the thoughts of ancient Greece and
Rome; legends and traditions of the middle
ages; Italian stories; Spanish ballads and
traditions; Scandinavian sagas; German fairy
tales and legends: both those written by the
finest of the German authors, and those current
among the people and committed to the
press by students in every German state;
there are French fables and fairy tales having
their own distinctive character; there is Hans
Christian Andersen; there are our own popular
stories, and many more; for even the
ungenial Russia furnishes a fabulist. Every
main period of history and every clime can
send a magic representation to this Child's
Parliament of creatures of the fancy. Let us
suppose that the same parent who has, in his
wisdom, called this parliament together, shall
constitute himself its president—its Mr.
Speaker. Let him know all the members,
and enough of the constituencies represented
by them, to be able to place his children
behind the scenes by help of a few brisk
comments that will be always welcome.
When the honourable knights the members
for Arabia are upon the floor, attention may
be called to the Orientalism of their mode of
speech, and of their manners; to the kind
of relation in which caliphs must have stood
towards their viziers and subjects among the
faithful; to the Eastern ideas of shopping
and domestic life. It is not necessary in the
least to lecture about everything that has to
be observed. Very few hints will suggest to
a child what sort of things are noticeable in
this way, and he will be glad to find in a
pleasure-book fresh matter for comparison
and amusement, riddles to guess, and so
forth. If the honourable member for early
modern Italy, Mr. Boccaccio, be not excluded
from the company, he will tell of the pestilences
that afiiicted towns in his time; and
while he teaches, as every outspoken soul
must teach, something of the beauty and
worth that lies concealed in the corruptest
heart of man, he will show how the great
Italy, which once gave laws to the known
world, could grovel in the days of its abasement.
When a fair member for France in
the days of Louis Quatorze—say Madame
d'Aulnoy—has possession of the children's
ears, the inner life of France, as it was then,
becomes, with a few words of help from Mr.
Speaker, clear to them. They may be
taught to observe usefully, too, how the
fancy that disports itself with princes and
princesses, diamonds and shepherdesses with
gilt crooks, differs from the more spiritual
fancy which has produced the most popular
of fairy tales in our own day. With a little
of such help as might be given by a parent
reasonably educated, and not grudging now
and then a search even in adult life for some
occasional additions to his knowledge, a child
having access to a library of fairy lore, might
penetrate much farther into the true soul of
history, acquire a much truer perception of
the life's language of men of every race,
Greeks and Arabians, Christians and Jews—
of the difference between men of the north
and of the south, and of the east and of
the west—and of the one spirit that is in
them all—than thousands ever get who have
have had grammars and catechisms only for
their mental spoon-meat, and who enter their
graves without having once come fairly into
contact with the warm, quick heart of human
knowledge.

We shall return to Madame d'Aulnoy
presently, and, with her stories for text,
illustrate rather more fully what has been said.
They are delightful tales; but we would
have nobody who buys them think that
when he has put Madame d'Aulnoy on his
shelf he has set up his family with fairy literature.
It is essential to the true theory of the
use of fairy lore that it should be allowed to
run with a full sweep, in something like all
its variety, through a child's mind. Madame
d'Aulnoy, as one of a happy company of taletellers,
is brilliant and charming whenever it
becomes her turn to speak; but if, instead of
speaking in her turn, she were suffered to
engross attention, she would become liable to
a good deal of adverse criticism. Strength
and vivacity of intellect, healthy feelings,
and wide sympathies, could never be produced