A pure faith in what they have heard that nought can upset, shouting forth their various heroes' praises with eager boundless joy. Fairy lore is rich with the magic names of these championed heroes and heroines, who dwell in that vast land, discovered by our authors, that lies between truth and fiction; and these all touch the heart and imagination with a nameless indescribable spell—a spell enhanced to infant minds by the, to them, absolute and literal reality of the romance. It is the normal phenomena of these tales that the tiny listener actually sees — these spirits and beings of a brighter world. One has only to teach some little urchin to read '"Grimm's Goblins," feed his mind upon it, excite and stimulate his hunger by it; and, fed upon such nutriment, his tastes will expand, his soul will grow larger; and you have in embryo already made a man of him. Would that we could live again in those halcyon days when we too revelled in Fairyland! Lavater says, "Keep him at least three paces distant who hates music and the laugh of a child." Keep him out of sight altogether, say we, who hates the sound of a Fairy Tale.
We have already alluded to the purity of this class of literature. all literature ministers to some form of taste — some specially to one taste, another to other tastes; but all supply a demand and represent respectively the intellectual status of particular bias in mind. Fairy Tales are the earliest cultivators of the purest bias in the youngest and freshest of soils : they are the especial prerogative and boon of children's libraries. Their world-wide popularity, their boundless influence, form a striking contrast to that immense flood of writing distinguished by bad taste and low aims, which, if not positively pernicious, is at best vulgar trash. With no higher standard than the reading of Fairy Stories, children would ever, from these sources, learn how good and holy is virtue and benevolence — how bad and wicked is craft and cunning. Nay, moral lessons may be learned from these sources, not only by the little world of wondering, believing minds, but by many minds that have long since passed the age of wondering.
