common to the parallel classes of society in countries whose populations have been long and widely disjointed. Strange to say, "Jack, commonly called the Giant-Killer, and Thomas Thumb," as the reviewer observes, "landed in England from the same hulls and war ships which conveyed Hengist and Horsa, and Ebba the Saxon." Who would have expected that Whittington and his Cat, whose identity and London citizenship appeared so certain;—Tom Thumb, whose parentage Heame bad traced, and whose monumental honours were the boast of Lincoln;—or the Giant-destroyer of Tylney, whose bones were supposed to moulder in his native village in Norfolk, should be equally renowned amongst the humblest inhabitants of Munster and Paderborn?
A careful comparison would probably establish many other coincidences. The sports and songs of children, to which MM. Grimm have directed considerable attention, often excite surprise at their striking resemblance to the usages of our own country. We wish, with Leucadia Doblado, speaking of Spanish popular sports, "that antiquarians were a more jovial and volatile race, and that some one would trace up these amusements to their common source," if such a thing were possible, or at any rate would point out their affinities. A remarkable coincidence occurs in the German song to the Lady-bird, or "Marien-würmchen." The second verse alone has been preserved in England; but it is singular that the burthen of the song should have been so long preserved in countries whose inhabitants have been so completely separated. The whole song, which is to be found in Wunderhorn, i. 235, may be thus translated:
Lady-bird! Lady-bird! pretty one! stay:
Come sit on my finger, so happy and gay;
With me shall no mischief betide thee;
No harm would I do thee, no foeman is near;
I only would gaze on thy beauties so dear.
Those beautiful winglets beside thee.
