Preface
The old taste for the Tale, pure and simple, which, stimulated by such writers as Mr. Kipling and M. de Maupassant, has grown anew of late years, is enough in itself to account for the present anthology. Within its limits will be found, as in a GARDEN, the fine flowers of the art, chosen with a preference for those of a romantic order, and transplanted from many lands and many times. From the East, where Romance may be said to have begun—whence we have taken an "Arabian Night"—to the extreme West, where Hawthorne and Edgar Poe gave the art a new effect; from Sir Thomas Malory to Sir Walter Scott; from Sterne to Hans Andersen; we have ranged to get all the variety in excellence, and all the delight of stories wonderfully well told, to be had within so small a space. Most of the tales are so famous that they need give no account of themselves. To "Balin and Balan," let us remind the reader, however, Mr. Swinburne has lent lately a new interest, and a new excuse, if one
