connection with the original fable. They fall
away, and are thought of no more, the instant
he puts his imagination in sympathy with the
innocent little circle, whose wide-open eyes are
fixed so eagerly upon him. Thus the stories
(not by any strained effort of the narrator's, but
in harmony with their inherent germ) transform
themselves, and reassume the shapes which
they might be supposed to possess in the pure
childhood of the world. When the first poet
or romancer told these marvellous legends, (such
is Eustace Bright's opinion,) it was still the
Golden Age. Evil had never yet existed; and
sorrow, misfortune, crime, were mere shadows
which the mind fancifully created for itself, as
a shelter against too sunny realities; or, at
most, but prophetic dreams, to which the dream-
er himself did not yield a waking credence.
Children are now the only representatives of
the men and women of that happy era; and
therefore it is that we must raise the intellect
and fancy to the level of childhood, in order to
re-create the original myths.

I let the youthful author talk as much and
as extravagantly as he pleased, and was glad

[[14]]

p013 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p014w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p015

v?