poraries and descendants? And yet far from being forgotten and passing away, it would seem as if each generation in turn as it came into the world looks to be delighted still by the brilliant pageant, and never tires or wearies of it. And on their side the princes and princesses never seem to grow any older; the castles and the lovely gardens flourish without need of repair or whitewash, or plumbers or glaziers. The princesses' gowns, too-sun, moon, and star-colour,—do not wear out or pass out of fashion or require altering. Even the seven-leagued boots do not appear to be the worse for wear. Numbers of realistic stories for children have passed away.

Little Henry and his Bearer, and Poor Harry and Lucy, have very nearly given up their little artless ghosts and prattle, and ceased making their own beds for the instruction of less excellently brought-up little boys and girls, and notwithstanding a very interesting article in the Saturday Review, it must be owned that Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton are not familiar playfellows in our nurseries and schoolrooms, and have passed somewhat out of date. But not so all these centenarians-Prince Riquet, Carabas, Little Red Riding-hood, Bluebeard and others. They seem as if they would never grow old. They play with the children, they amuse the elders, there seems no end to their fund of spirits and perennial youth.

H., to whom I made this remark, said from the opposite chimney-corner, "No wonder; the stories

are only histories of real living persons turned into fairy princes and princesses. Fairy stories are everywhere and every-day. We are all princes and princesses in disguise, or ogres or wicked dwarfs.· All these histories are the histories of human nature, which does not seem to change very much in a thousand years or so, and we don't get tired of the fairies because they are so true to it."

After this little speech of H.'s, we spent an unprofitable half-hour reviewing our acquaintance, and classing them under their real characters and qualities. We had dined with Lord Carabas only the day before and met Puss in Boots-Beauty and the Beast were also there; we uncharitably counted up, I am ashamed to say, no less than six Bluebeards. Jack and the Beanstalk we had met just starting on his climb. A Red Riding-hood; a girl with toads dropping from her mouth: we knew three or four of each. Cinderellas-alas! who does not know more than one dear, poor, pretty Cinderella? and, as for sleeping Princesses in the Woods, how many one can reckon up! Young, old, ugly, pretty, awakening, sleeping still.

"Do you remember Cecilia Lulworth," said H., "and Dorlicote? Poor Cecilia !" Some lives are couleur de rose, people say; others seem to be, if not couleur de rose all through, yet full of bright, beautiful tints, blues, pinks, little bits of harmonious cheerfulness. Other lives, if not so brilliant, and

seeming more or less grey at times, are very sweet and gentle in tone, with faint gleams of gold or lilac to brighten them. And then again others are black and hopeless from the beginning. Besides all

these, there are some which have always appeared to me as if they were of a dark, dull hue; a dingy, heavy brown, which no happiness, or interest, or bright colour could ever enliven. Blues turn sickly, roses seem faded, and yellow lilacs look red and ugly upon these heavy backgrounds. "Poor Cecilia," as H. called her, hers had always seemed to me one of these latter existences, unutterably dull, commonplace, respectable, stinted, ugly, and useless.

Lulworth Hall, with the great dark park bounded by limestone walls, with iron gates here and there, looked like a blot upon the bright and lovely landscape. The place from a distance, compared with the surrounding country, was a blur and a blemish, as it were, sad, silent, solitary.

Travellers passing by sometimes asked if the place was uninhabited, and were told, "No, shurethe fam❜ly lives thear all the yeaurr round." Some charitable souls might wonder what life could be like behind those dull gates. One day a young fellow riding by saw rather a sweet woman's face gazing for an instant through the bars, and he went on his way with a momentary thrill of pity. Need I say that it was poor Cecilia who looked out vacantly to see who

was passing along the high-road. She was surrounded

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by hideous moreen, oil-cloth, punctuality, narrowmindedness, horsehair, and mahogany. Loud bells rang at intervals, regular, monotonous. Surly but devoted attendants waited upon her. She was rarely alone; her mother did not think it right that a girl in Cecilia's position should "race" about the grounds unattended; as for going outside the walls it was not to be thought of. When Cecilia went out, with her gloves on, and her goloshes, her mother's companion, Miss Bowley, walked beside her up and down the dark laurel walk at the back of the house,-up and down, down and up, up and down. "I think I am getting tired, Maria," Miss Lulworth would say at last. "If so, we had better return to the hall," Maria would reply," although it is before our time." And then they would walk home in silence, between the iron railings and laurel-bushes.

As Cecilia walked erectly by Miss Bowley's side, the rooks went whirling over their heads, the slugs crept sleepily along the path under the shadow of the grass and the weeds; they heard no sounds except the cawing of the birds, and the distant monotonous hacking noise of the gardener and his boy digging in the kitchen-garden.

Cecilia, peeping into the long drab drawing-room on her return, might perhaps see her mother, erect and dignified, at her open desk, composing, writing, crossing, re-writing, an endless letter to an indifferent cousin in Ireland, with a single candle and a small

piece of blotting-paper, and a pen-wiper made of ravellings, all spread out before her.

"You have come home early, Cecil," says the lady, "You had better make the most

without looking up.

of your time, and practise till the dressing-bell rings. Maria will kindly take up your things."

And then in the chill twilight Cecilia sits down to the jangling instrument with the worn silk flutings. A faded rack it is upon which her fingers have been distended ever since she can remember. A great many people think there is nothing in the world so good for children as scoldings, whippings, dark cupboards, and dry bread and water, upon which they expect them to grow up into tall, fat, cheerful, amiable men and women; and a great many people think that for grown-up young people the silence, the chillness, the monotony, and sadness of their own fading twilight days is all that is required. Mrs. Lulworth and Maria Bowley her companion, Cecilia's late governess, were quite of this opinion. They themselves, when they were little girls, had been slapped, snubbed, locked up in closets, thrust into bed at all sorts of hours, flattened out on backboards, set on high stools to play the piano for days together, made to hem frills five or six weeks long, and to learn immense pieces of poetry, so that they had to stop at home all the afternoon. And though Mrs. Lulworth suspicious, narrow-minded,

had grown up stupid,

soured, and overbearing, and had married for an