as classic streams, and their borders will be trod with new and superior emotions." In this enumeration of streams, the Clyde, the most beautiful and romantic of our rivers, does not make its appearance; and, in fact, I do not recollect a song or tolerable copy of verses where it is mentioned: but my acquaintance with the writers of poetry is not very general. If the following Pastoral be found worthy of the approbation of the public, this opprobrium will be removed; the beauty of the fall of Bonniton will be considered with new interest; and the cataract of Corra will seem more wild and awful, while, when the visitants of these scenes saunter amid the neighbouring groves, they will recal the airy forms of their former tenants, their dress, their songs and dances, imminente luna. It may be expected, perhaps, that I should endeavour to shew the kind of creatures that Fairies were supposed to be; and this perhaps may be best accomplished by dividing the genus into its several distinct species: for, as to the existence of the genus, I need only refer to the convincing proof brought by Queen Mab herself, who endeavours, like Descartes, to prove her own existence, in the first scene of the second act of this Pastoral.. With respect to the species, there are three kinds of Fairies; the Continental Fairies, if I may call them so--the Scotish or Gothic Fairy--and the English, which is a sort of middle species, differing in some degree from each of the others. The Continental Fairies are very different indeed from the "wee green-coated bodies of Scotland. " They are almost all of them fine ladies, Florinas, Rosettas, Brilliantes, Luminosas, or Chrystallinas. These ladies dwelt in palaces of opals or rubies, surrounded by emerald groves, and sapphire seas (e). Nothing is more wonderful in the stories in which they are introduced than natural events; and indeed the most marvellous thing in a fairy tale, as Fontenelle observes, is when a person, shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, has the misfortune to be drowned. In short, the philosophers who have written these tales seem to have excluded nothing from their scenes except nature: They have, in a considerable degree, transgressed the rule, sint ficta simillima veris; and appear to have been of the opinion of the celebrated Dr Young, who, in his Night Thoughts, says to Lorenzo, Know this, Lorenzo, seem it ne'er so strange, Nothing but what aftonishes is true. It is extremely probable, as has been observed in a dissertation in the Minstrelsy of the Scotish Border, that not only the idea, but even the name of fairies, was derived from the East. In Persia, we are told by Sir William Jones and Ousely, there is supposed to exist a class of imaginary beings called Peris: These are represented as benignant and beautiful females, Gay creatures of the element, And play i' the plighted clouds. Comus, l. 300. They hover in the balmy and fragrant air, and live upon the odours of the jasmine and the rose. With these beautiful beings, we are told the Persians contrast the Dives, as in the Rape of the Lock the Sylphs are contrasted with the Gnomes. The Dives are of the masculine gender, and are as cruel and malignant as the Peris are beneficent and amiable. In like manner, in fairy tales, we have malignant green dwarfs, who enchant or shut up princesses in towers or subterraneous palaces, so that it often requires no little sagacity and valour in princes to set them free, notwithstanding all the assistance which some good fairy is ever apt to give on such momentous occasions. From the Arabs, who were extremely fond of Persian tales and poetry, and who, wanting the letter P in their alphabets, called these beings Feris, the name as well as the idea was communicated to the cruisaders, and to the western nations of Europe (ƒ). The term Elfe is of Gothic origin, and signified those inferior spirits who inhabited the woods, lakes, and mountains (g). For in all countries, in the infancy of physics, each phenomenon has a particular cause assigned it, to which is attributed intelligence and will. Nature is peopled with a world of spirits, like the sylphs of Pope, who fan the flowers, scatter the rain, and pour the stream. They thought that Genii mov'd the mighty frame, Hence Jove, hence Juno, in the fapphire heaven To tower crown'd Cybele the earth they gave In trees the Dryads; Naiads dwelt in floods; And shameless Fawns and Satyrs trod the woods (4). But leaving these ladies who travel in chariots of carbuncles, drawn by flying cats, winged serpents, or birds of Paradise, we shall proceed to say something of the Scotish Fairies, who are a very different race, being derived from the superstitions of the Gothic nations. From the Edda and the writings of northern authors, we learn, that there was believed to exist a kind of diminutive demons, whom they called Duergar, or Dwarfs, to whom many wonderful performances were attributed. They excelled particularly in the fabrication of arms and other mechanical arts, and inhabited mighty caves among the rocks. The belief in the existence of such supernatural beings arose, in these countries, not, perhaps, as in happier climates, from a warm imagination communicating life to every object, or attempting to account for the phenomena of nature: It arose perhaps from their solitude, and wild romantic situation, amid lonely hills and dismal lakes. In such cases, where the ideas are few, fancy is ever busy to fill up the void which the uniformity of external objects leaves in the mind. The imagination blends itself with the reality, the wonderful with the natural, the false with the true. The ideas acquire strength, and mingle in such a manner with external impressions as hardly to be distinguished from them. And as the laws of nature are yet unknown, the problem of probability is unlimited, and fancy grows familiar with chimeras which pass for truths. The effect of solitude in realising the fictions of the imagination is well exemplified in the second-sight of the highlands of Scotland; and the pictures which lonely fancy delineates on the mind cannot be more happily expressed than in the following lines of the Castle of Indolence : As when a Shepherd of the Hebride Isles, The whilft in ocean Phoebus dips his wain, A vaft affembly moving to and fro; Then all at once in air diffolves the wond'rous fhow. Indeed I have often thought it fortunate that, in ages of ignorance, the tales of fairies, and witches, ́and enchantments were credited; for it is difficult to imagine how the peerless dames and valiant knights of those days could have passed the winter evenings in their moated castles, without the help of such narrations *. And I have sometimes thought that many * O l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables On a banni les demons et les fées ; |