HE creatures of our fathers' fancy have long since taken flight from the woods and meadows of our land, leaving no vestige upon their once familiar habitations. The whole length of this island, heretofore populous with dainty presences, lies now forlorn and empty in the possession of inferior hands. The soil is turned to ignoble uses, broken with the plough and the harrow, and the hills that once tinkled to the laughter of the fairy now smoke from a hundred brazen mouths; or at best stand silent in a melancholy reticence. Each hour brings its own disillusionment, but it seems a pity we have lost our hold upon this pretty faith, which ran against no whim of modern progress. The red sun takes the humours from the grass, and the wind set the trees a-quiver, but they warm not, neither fan, the elfin folk in the quiet glades. All these are fled, rapt into a limbo of forgotten myths, where gnomes and djinns and trolls keep them spectral company. The lively imagination of the human kind has fashioned a creditable variety of these creatures, and now that the art is gone with the capacity of belief, we cold inheritors of the ages may take our choice from a motley society of perished immortals. For myself, I have little liking for the Oriental invention; one could not have used these lank black monsters with special tenderness or confidence. They were too oppressive in their distance from humanity, and it had been impossible to invest them with the common graces of intercourse. They were not constructed for company, and at most might be tamed into some sort of grudging slavery by mystic rings and signals. For the more part their work was evil like their persons, and you could not but feel that they were happiest torturing some individual enemy out of his wits. they were potent enough, it is true, and had an admirable gift of in corporeality which must have served their masters at odd times; but their grotesque and ingenious personalities put them out of human sympathy. One could never have been quite secure with them; while they lasted, society must have ever been within a pinch of chaos. The djinns would have made a black and a bitter business of the world.