be in part ascribed to this circumstance. He carries you into far- off scenes, and among ancient days and manners ; and you see at once that jou must feel as men then felt, and believe af they believed.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether, with our present habits and tone of mind, it would be possible to work up an endur- able piece of fiction, of which the scene should be laid in our own country and in our own day, and which yet should embody the machinery of our old tales. Relate a fairy tale to some youth- ful circle of open-mouthed listeners on a winter's evening, and see if half the enchantment does not depend upon their realising the scene as having existed in times far removed from their own days. Tell the same story, only altering the circumstantials to those among which they themselves live, — as if, for instance, the things had happened in some neighbouring viUage, and within the last year, — and the magical effect will be gone. They feel that the thing is unnatural ; and the quiet, earnest look of wonder and awe with which the little audience ^lung upon the lips of the narrator will soon, we fear, be changed for one of mingled disappointment and scorn. They wiU shew not only that they disbelieve, but that they despise, what you are telling them.'
To conclude : — these Tales, with their no less pleasing com- panions,- are commended to the attention of all lovers amongst us of what is noble and beautiful in external nature, as well as in the human heart and life. We do so with hearty confidence ; nor do we fear that they will suffer, even by oft- repeated perusaL Manly Christian grace, virgin purity, hoary wisdom, happy child- like innocence ; the grand, the severe, the tender, the lowly, the affectionate, and whatever else is calculated to touch and elevate
I Perhaps the modern " ghost-story" may occur to some as an apparent exception to this remark ; and we believe that in some places popular belief would almost admit of such machinery being employed, without fatally destroying the consistency and verisimilitude of a tale. Still, as a general remark, what Sir W. Scott says in a previous page of the church- yard ghost is true; and any of our tale-writers, therefore, who should be adventurous enough to make use of such machinery without due care to clear up the mystery at the end, would run a great risk of making ship- wreck of his or her popularity. It might do, were the scene laid amongst characters supposed to live under the influence of such forms of belief; there would then be so far a coherence. But we suspect this must be in " Dreamland " — not in England.
' See the Tales of Fouqufe in the volume entitled " Romantic Fiction."
