lose their senses. But she is apt to bring herself into
suspicion by trying never to let her back be seen. If you
make the sign of the cross, she is obliged to turn round.
We know not whether the charm remains in spite of the
dough-trough, provided you are once beguiled. A more
unsatisfactory charm could not be found. Think of clasp-
ing her to your heart, and finding your hands come together
within an ace of
your breastbone!

When lonely German clasps an Elle-maid,
And finds too late a butcher's tray -

We may laugh at such horrors at this time of day, especially in England; but these darker parts of superstition are still mischievous sometimes to those who believe in them; and we have no doubt there are still believers, upon grounds which it would be found difficult to shake. Το say the truth, we are among the number of those who, with all allowance for the lies that have been plentifully told on such matters, do yet believe that fairies have actually been seen; but then it was by people whose perceptions were disturbed. It is observable that the ordinary seers have been the old, the diseased, or the intoxicated; young people's aunts, or grandfathers, or peasants going home from the ale-house. When the young see them, their minds are prepared by a firm belief in what their elders have told them; so that terrors which should pass off for nothing, on closer inspection, become a real perception with these weaker heads; the ideas impressed upon the brain taking the usual morbid stand outside of it. We have no doubt that the case is precisely the same, in its degree, with the spectral illusion of faces and more horrid sights, experienced by opium-eaters, and others in a delicate state of health. We learn from a work of the late Mr. Bingley,

that the metal known by the name of cobalt, is so called from the German word kobold, or goblin, so often mentioned in this article, the miners who dig for it appearing to be particularly subject to the vexations of the elf, in consequence of the poison which his namesake exhales.* If it should be asked how we can tell that any thing which is really seen does not really exist, we answer, that such a state of existence is, at all events, not a healthy one, and therefore its perceptions are not to be taken as proper to humanity. Not to mention that spectral illusions are of no use but to terrify, and are quite as likely, and more so, to happen to the conscientious and the delicately organized and considerate, as to those whose vices might be supposed to require them.

The consequence of these darker parts of the belief in fairies, is that deliriums have frequently been occasioned by them; fancied announcements and forebodings have preyed on the spirits in domestic life, and the popular mind kept in a state, which bigotry and worldliness have been enabled to turn to the worst account. But a countercharm was nevertheless growing up in secret against the witchcrafts of imagination, by dint of imagination itself, and the readiness with which it was prepared to enter into the thoughts of others, and sympathize with the great cause of knowledge and humanity. The cure for these and a hundred evils, is not the rooting out of imagination, which would be a proceeding, in fact, as impossible as undesirable, but the cultivation of its health and its cheerfulness. Good sense and fancy need never be separated. Imagination is no enemy to experience, nor can experience draw her from her last and best holds. She stands by,

"Useful Knowledge," vol. i. p. 220.

willing to know every thing he can discover, and able to recommend it, by charms infinite, to the good will and sentiment of all men. What has been in the world is, perhaps, the best for what is to be, none of its worst evils excepted; but found out and known to be evils, the latter have lost even their doubtful advantages; imagination, in the finer excitements of sympathy and the beautiful creations of the poets, casts off these shades of uneasy slumber; and all that she says to knowledge is, " Discard me not, for your own sake as well as mine; lest with want of me, want of sympathy itself return, and utility be again mistaken for what it is not, as superstition has already mistaken it."

The sum of our creed in these matters is this: Spectral illusion, or the actual sight of spiritual appearances, takes place only with the unhealthy, and therefore is not desirable as a general condition: but spiritual or imaginative sight is consistent with the healthiest brain, and enriches our sources of enjoyment and reflection. The three things we have to take care of, on these and all other occasions, are health, knowledge, and imagination.

GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST, THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, &c.

H

|AIL, gorgeous East! Hail, regions of the colored morning! Hail, Araby and Persia ! not the Araby and Persia of the geographer, dull to the dull, and governed by the foolish, — but the Araby and Persia of books,

of the other and more real East, which thousands visit every day, the Orient of poets, the magic land of the child, the uneffaceable recollection of the man.

To us, the "Arabian Nights" is one of the most beautiful books in the world: not because there is nothing but pleasure in it, but because the pain has infinite chances of vicissitude, and because the pleasure is within the reach of all who have body and soul and imagination. The poor man there sleeps in a doorway with his love, and is richer than a king. The sultan is dethroned to-morrow,、 and has a finer throne the next day. The pauper touches a ring, and spirits wait upon him. You ride in the air; you are rich in solitude; you long for somebody to return your love, and an Eden encloses you in its arms. You have this world, and you have another. Fairies are in your moonlight. Hope and imagination have their fair play, as well as the rest of us. There is action heroical, and passion too: people can suffer, as well as enjoy, for love; you have bravery, luxury, fortitude, self-devotion, comedy as good as Moliere's, tragedy, Eastern manners, the wonderful that is in a commonplace, and the verisimilitude that is in the wonderful calendars, cadis, robbers, enchanted palaces, paintings full of color and drapery,

warmth for the senses, desert in arms and exercises to keep it manly, cautions to the rich, humanity for the more happy, and hope for the miserable. Whenever we see the "Arabian Nights" they strike a light upon our thoughts, as though they were a talisman incrusted with gems; and we fancy we have only to open the book for the magic casket to expand, and enclose us with solitude and a garden.

This wonderful work is still better for the West than for the East; because it is a thing remoter, with none of our commonplaces; and because, our real opinions not being concerned in it, we have all the benefit of its genius without being endangered by its prejudices. The utility of a work of imagination indeed must outweigh the drawbacks upon it in any country. It makes people go out of themselves, even in pursuit of their own good; and is thus opposed to the worst kind of selfishness. These stories of vicissitude and natural justice must do good even to sultans, and help to keep them in order, though it is doubtful how far they may not also serve to keep them in possession. With us the good is unequivocal. The cultivation of hope comes in aid of the progress of society; and he may safely retreat into the luxuries and rewards of the perusal of an Eastern tale, whom its passion for the beautiful helps to keep in heart with his species, and by whom the behavior of its arbitrary kings is seen in all its regal absurdity, as well as its human excuses.

Like all matters on which the poets have exercised their fancy, the opinions respecting the nature of the supernatural beings of the East have been rendered inconsistent even among the best authorities. Sir John Malcolm says that Deev means a magician, whereas, in the Persian Dictionary of Richardson, it is rendered spirit and giant;