FAIRY TALES.* Lx these three pretty and amusing little books
we have a volume of fairy tales for three sorts of children,—the simple credulous child of marvelling nature, the humorous fanciful child of modern sentiment, and lastly, the strong-minded child of the world with "a verifying faculty," in other words, a love for business details and the modern sarcasm. The little book first on our list is only a prettily illustrated selection of various favourite old fairy tales, such as " Jack the Giant Killer," " The Yellow Dwarf," " The Invisible
Prince," - Whittington and His Cat," " Bluebeard," "Cinderella," and other traditions of a bygone age, embodying the simple earnest faith of our ancestors. There is no modern humour or modern realism in these tales. They have all the idealism and credulous conviction of a past day. The charm of them consists, as in all such tales, in the wonderful arbitrarineas of the prescribe/ methods by which such great results are achieved. Why, for instance; should a golden goose have the curious effect of obliging every one who touched the person holding it, or any one linked by the con: ducting medium of a chain of living beings with the person holding it, to hold on and follow passively where he leads? Why should a certain enchanted apple make the tissues of the nose grow, and an enchanted pear cause the rapid absorption of those tissues 10 These are the delightful arbitrarinesses which captivate the simple old-world child's marvelling imagination. And of such stories as these, Messrs. Warne's Nursery Keepsake gives us some admirable specimens, illustrated with great taste. But we have two protests to make ;—one against the allegorical introduction called the "Adventures of Fairy Tale," extracted from some horrid rationalizing German author, which is, we submit, quite contrary in genius to the earnest spirit of the old fairy tales. It is
• The Book of Nursery Tates. A Keepsake for the 'Young. London : Warne and Co.
What the Moos Saw, =d otter Tal.4. By nem O. Andersen, tran.lated by H. W. Duleken, PaD. Witt Eight Illustrations by A. W. Reyes. Loluluu Routledge. The Magic Mi. ror. A Rou .d of Tales for Young and Old. By William Gilbert, Author of Dc Pro; undis. With ghty-foar lllustratiout by W. S. Gilbert. London : Strahan. enough to shake children's faith absolutely in the Yellow Dwarf, and Cinderella, and the Nose-Tree, and all the rest of these enticing wonders, to be told that Fairy Tale is the daughter of Queen Fancy, and the sister of the little Dreams, and such stuff. Why, the merest child will scent something wrong at once in all that allegory, and begin to feel the profoundest scepticism as to whether the little man in the red jacket really gave the soldiers the wonderful purse, cloak, and horn, or whether it was only Fairy Tale, the sister of Dreams, who "made belief " so. We warn the editor of these tales to beware of the rationalizing German spirit which has suggested this ill-conceived and sentimental introduc- tion, and to leave it out of his second edition without fail. It is a blot on the book. The second protest we have to make is against the omission of "Jack and the Bean Stalk." That is by far the finest of our English fairy traditions, and even superior, we think, to "Jack the Giant Killer." The bold conception of substantial bean stalks growing up to a new country suspended in mid-air, where the giant who persecuted Jack's father has taken refuge,—no one knows how, for his only way of returning is by Jack's bean stalks,—is a tonic to a child's imagination, and the golden harp which plays of itself, and warns its master of coming danger too, is one of the most poetical among the various beautiful reali- ties of the old traditional fairy tales. " Jack the Giant Killer " is coarse and brutal, entirely wanting in all nuance, in com- parison. Now why did the editor of this pretty little. work leave out such a tale as " Jack and the Bean Stalk " and insert such a flavourless one as " Blanche and Rosalind," which, even if true, is utterly without purpose, grandeur, or finesse?
The second volume is a translation of some of Andersen's ex- quisitely humorous tales, tales not merely humourous, but covered with a delicate bloom of sentiment. As far as we can see, there are none which have not before appeared in some form or other in England, but it is a good and playful version, and many of the illus- trations are happy also. Their value consists, as usual with Ander- sen, in the humour and gentle irony which the children of a few years ago appreciated so vividly. The Mother-Stork's curtain lectures to her husband, so superior in matronly reserve and in real humility to those attributed by Douglas Jerrold to human mothers, are simple and earnest enough to inspire faith in children, and yet cannot fail to suggest even to children the humorous analogy to parental discussions.
"One evening stork-papa stayed out very long ; and when he came home he looked very bustling and important. 'I've something very terrible to tell you,' he said to the stork-mamma. 'Let that be,' she replied. 'Remember that I'm hatching the eggs, and you might agitate me, and I might do them a mischief.'—`You must know it,' he continued. 'She has arrived here—the daughter of our host in Egypt—she has
-dared to undertake the journey here—and she's gone She who came from the race of the fairies ? Oh, tell me all about it ! You know I can't bear to be kept long in suspense when I'm hatching eggs.'—. You see, mother, she believed in what the doctor said, and you told me true. She believed that the moor flowers would bring healing to her sick father, and she has flown here in swan's plumage, in company with the other swan-princesses, who come to the North every year to renew their youth. She has come here, and she is gone !'—' You are much too long-winded !* exclaimed the stork-mamma, and the eggs might catch cold. I can't bear being kept in such suspense!'—' I have kept watch,' said the stork- papa; ' and to-night, when I went into the reeds—there where the marsh ground will bear me—three swans came. Something in their flight seemed to say to me, "Look out ! That's not altogether swan ; it's only swan's feathers !" Yes, mother, you have a feeling of intuition just as I have; you know whether a thing is right or wrong.'—' Yes, certainly,' she replied ; but tell me about the princess. rm sick of hearing of the swan's feathers.'—' Well, you know that in the middle of the moor there is something like a lake,' continued stork-papa. You can see one corner of it if you raise yourself a little. There, by the reeds and the green mud, lay a great alder stump ; and on this the three swans sat, flapping their wings and looking about them. One of them threw off her plumage, and I immediately recognized her as our house princess from Egypt ! There she sat, with no covering but her long black hair. I heard her tell the others to pay good heed to the swan's plumage, while she dived down into the water to pluck flowers which she fancied she saw growing there. The others nodded, and picked up the empty feather dress and took care of it. "I wonder what they will do with it?" thought I ; and perhaps she asked herself the same question. If so, she got an answer—a very practical answer—for the two rose up and flew away with their swan's plumage. " Do thou dive down," they cried ; "thou shalt never see Egypt again ! Remain thou. here in the moor !" And so saying, they tore the swan's plumage into a thousand pieces, so that the feathers whirled about like a snow-storm ; and away they flew —the two faithless princesses !'—' Why that is terrible !' said stork- mamma. 'I can't bear to hear any more of it. But now tell we what happened next.'—' The princess wept and lamented aloud. Her tears fell fast on the alder stump, and the latter moved, for it was not a regular alder stump, but the marsh king—he who lives and' rules in the depths of the moor ! I myself saw it—how the stump of the tree turned round, and ceased to be a tree stump ; long thin branches grew forth from it like arms. Then the poor child was terribly frightened, and sprang np to flee away. She hurried across to the green slimy ground ; but that cannot even carry me, much less her. She sank immediately, and the alder stump dived down too ; and it was ho who drew her down. Great black bubbles rose up out of the moor slim; and the last trace of both of them vanished when these burst. Now the princess is buried in the wild moor, and never more will she bear away a flower to Egypt. Your heart would have burst, mother, if you had seen You ought not to tell me anything of the kind at such a time as this,' said stork-mamma ; the eggs might suffer by it. The princess will find some way of escape ; some one will come to help her. If it had been you or I, or one of our people, it would certainly have been all over
with But I shall go and look every day to see if anything happens,' said stork-papa. And he was as good as his word."
Now this, we conceive, though not adapted to so earnestly marvel- ling a class of children as the old fairy tales, and glancing aside, indeed, not a little to humau analogies, is the kind of tale to satisfy a large class of modern children, to whom the fairy tale has become a literary want rather than a deeply cherished and profound faith.
The last book on our list, and the most novel, if not the most ori- ginal, is a book of fairy tales for the child of the world,—rather too much a child of the world in some respects, —as it more than insinu- ates not only that there are bad fairies and good fairies, which is orthodox and true, but that all the fairies are subject to human vices and maliguities, and are in fact " dangerous classes," perhaps rather more, instead of less, disreputable than human beings. Then it appeals, too, to the child of the world in its business accuracy and gross realism,—portious of the fairy events happen on a corner of Kennington Common, and are decidedly of a materialistic and unideal kind, though as preternatural as any others. The merchant who by unfortunately wishing, in presence of a mirror possessed (but without his knowledge) of fairy properties, for a glass brain as clear as crystal, that might exactly reflect all the motives of men without being subject to any agitating passions, obtains that un- desirable commodity, is followed by Mr. Gilbert most minutely into all the transactions in cloth, timber, defensive armour, &c., by which, with head daily growing heavier and more incapable of pleasure, he makes his vast gains on 'Change and elsewhere. The sacristan who wishes to be tried by St. Anthony's temptations for a month in order to prove his own virtue is followed by Mr. Gilbert into all the difficulties of his platonic attachment to St. Anthony's tradi- tional pig, and the detail of the vegetables demanded and consumed by such pig is chronicled with a careful pen. The illustrations of Mr. W. S. Gilbert, too, though sometimes indulging too much in mere exaggeration, are exceedingly original and able. The picture of the goblins carrying the ham—(the goblins are, however, much more truly delineated than the ham)—to the great House by night is a wonder of vivid humour, indeed the ability of the illustrations is on the whole quite up to the ability of the tales, which is very great. Their force, however, chiefly consists in their business realism,—the punctual detail of their supernatural character,--a department of fairy literature which is quite new and fresh. Stillthe children to whom these tales appeal can scarcely " boast to be better than their fathers." They are the children who know that life is not what it was once supposed, who are aware that even supernatural facts when brought to book involve a good deal of dry detail, who have no belief that the world of wonders is, any better than the world of ordinary life, who, if they were offered a power of wishing for some supernatural gift before a magic mirror, would probably decide that it was more prudent to decline the offer with thanks; or who, if they had entangled themselves in any affair of the kind, might even conduct it with such amazing prudence and diplomatic discrimination as to baffle the fairy powers themselves, and get the advantages without the disadvantages*of fairy patronage. To such children Mr. Gilbert's book will be a useful lesson in the dangers attending the use of fairy gifts, and to them we recommend it heartily. But for ourselves, we prefer the simpler race, who are not too many for the fairies, and who devoutly wish to meet some day with an old woman in whom the disinterested gift of a cake or an orange may suddenly develops a beautiful rush of fairy beneficence.
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