was a duck— that inside the duck was a golden
egg— and that inside the golden egg was his
(the magician's) entire strength. All this
information was given to the princess, under
the most solemn promise of secresy, and
therefore, says the satirical Sclavonic chronicler,
she communicated it to the sage, whose
course of action was now prompt enough.
He went to the wood, he found the tree, he
shot the deer, he extricated the duck, he
extracted the egg, all in proper House-that-
Jack-built order, and by sucking the egg
terminated the power of the little magician.
The princess was set at liberty; the Sun-horse
was taken home to his proper country, much
to the delight of the inhabitants; and the
king offered the sage half his kingdom as a
reward. But, the sage slapped his hand on
his heart, in the most heroic fashion, and
saying that he preferred his little hut and
his big book to all the kingdoms in the world,
stalked out of the court in a high state of
complacency.

So, if our readers want to fit a moral to
this Slovack rigmarole, they may, if they
please, take the good old maxim, " Virtue is
its own reward."

FAIR-TIME AT LEIPSIC.

"HAVE you a lodging for the night, friend?"
enquires a kind voice near me, speaking to my
very thoughts.

"No. I am a stranger in Leipsic."

"And your herberg ?" (House of call.)

"I know nothing of it."

The enquirer is a little man with a thin
face, and a voice which might be disagreeable,
were it not mellowed by good nature. He
tells me, then, that he is a jewel-case maker,
and has no doubt that I shall find a ready
shelter in the herberg of his trade till the
morning, if I am willing to accept of it. It is
in the little churchyard. In spite of this
ominous direction I shake the good man
heartily by the hand, and, although I lose
him in the darkness and confusion of the
railway-station, cling mentally to the little
churchyard as a passport to peace and rest.
I don't know how it is that I escape
interrogation by the police, but once out of the
turmoil of the crowd, I find myself wandering
by a deep ditch, and the shadowy outline
of a high wall, seeking in vain amid the
drizzling mist for one of the gates of the city.
When almost hopeless of success, a welcome
voice enquires my destination; and, under the
guidance of a worthy Saxon, I find myself in
Kleine Kirche Hof at last. There is the
herberg in question, but with no light—
welcoming aspect— for it is already ten
o'clock, and its guests are all in bed.
Dripping with rain, and with a rueful aspect, I
prefer my request for a lodging. The ''vater"
looks dubiously at me out of the corner of
one eye, till having inspected my passport,
he brightens up a little, and thinks he can
find me a bed, but cannot break through
the rules of his house so far as to give me
any supper. It is too late.

Lighting a small lanthorn he leads the
way across a stone-paved yard, and opening
one leaf of the folding-doors of a
stable at its upper end, inducts me at
once into the interior. It also is paved
with stones, is small, and is nearly
choked up with five or six bedsteads. The
vater points to one which happily is as yet
untenanted, and says, "Now, make haste,
will you ? I can't stop here all night." Before
I have time to scramble into bed we are
already in darkness, and no sooner is the door
closed than my bed-fellows, who seemed all
fast asleep a moment before, open a rattling
fire of enquiries as to my parentage, birthplace,
trade, and general condition; and having
satisfied all this amiable questioning we fall
asleep.

We turn our waking eyes upon a miserable
glimmering which finds its way through
the wooden bars of our stable-door; but it
tells us of morning, of life, and of hope, and
we rise with a bound, and are as brisk as
bees in our summary toilet. With a dry crust
of bread and a cup of coffee, we are fortified
for our morning's work. I have a letter of
introduction upon Herr Herzlich of the
Brühl, at the sign of the Golden Horn,
between the White Lamb and the Brass
Candlestick.

Every house in Leipsic has its sign, and
the numbers run uninterruptedly through
the whole city, as in most German towns, so
that, the Clown's old joke of "Number One,
London," if applied to them, would be no
joke at all. I leave the gloomy precincts of
little churchyard, and descending a slight
incline over a pebbly, irregular pavement, with
scarcely a sign of footpath, arrive at the lower
end of the Brühl. There is a murmur of
business about the place, for this is the first
week of the Easter Fair, but there are none
of those common sounds usually associated
with the name to English ears. No braying
of trumpets, clashing of symbols, or hoarse
groaning of gongs; no roaring through
broad-mouthed horns, smacking of canvas, or
pattering of incompetent rifles. All these
vulgar noises belonging to a fair, are
banished out of the gates of the city: which
is itself deeply occupied with sober, earnest
trading.

Leipsic has the privilege of holding three
markets in the year. The first, because the
most important, is called the Ostermesse, or
Easter Fair, and commences on Jubilee
Sunday after Easter. It continues for three
weeks, and is the great cloth market of the
year. The second begins on the Sunday after
St. Michael, and is called Michialismesse. It is
the great book fair, is also of three weeks'
duration, and dates, as does the Easter Fair,
from the end of the twelfth century. The
New Year's Fair commences on the First of