is;" and as she spoke the Fairy stooped over a clear tide pool which mirrored her lovely countenance; "and yet look what a nose I have! It is absolutely exquisite! And this hair!" and she held up her long silken curling tresses and looked at them reflected in the water as she spoke. A musical laugh rang through the fairy group. Euphrosyne resumed her seat. "There isn't a mortal damsel in the world who would not go into raptures to resemble me," pursued she, "and yet—but, oh dear, I am getting quite prosy, and it is quite useless, for Ianthe has decided. I, on the contrary, am thinking of something far less romantic and interesting, but I suspect far more necessary to the happiness of mortals than beauty—I mean RICHES."

"Men are horribly fond of them, certainly," observed the Fairy from behind, whose name was Ambrosia. "I can't endure men on that very account. Look at the grubby wretched lives they lead in counting-houses and banks, and dreadful dingy holes and corners of great towns, where we wouldn't set the soles of our feet, and this for forty or fifty years, perhaps, in order that in the fifty-first, or perhaps later still, they may turn into butterflies for the little bit of life that is left to them. And such butterflies, too! not knowing what to do with their gay coats and fine wings when they get them at last."

"I think you are putting an extreme case," observed Euphrosyne. "Though the grubs themselves may not thoroughly enjoy the riches they have so laboriously acquired, their children or grandchildren may, and live at ease and enjoy them. I should not think of bestowing great riches on uneducated paupers. But it is another matter to give them to people whom education has refined, and who would know how to enjoy and employ them."

"I wonder," suggested a very little Fairy, scarcely grown to her full size, "why you don't just give your Godchildren moderate good health, and enough money to make them quite comfortable without puzzling them?"

"You are a complete Solomon," observed Euphrosyne, "but you must know, my dear, that moderate good health and a mere comfortable competency would hardly be considered Fairy gifts by our friends in the lower world. These things are, as it were, the absolute necessities of a happy life; they are the beef and mutton (to borrow an earthly simile) of the entertainment. Fairy gifts form the somewhat unnecessary (and questionably wholesome) second course, the sweets, the bonbons, the luscious luxuries of the repast.

"Very few, by comparison, get them. Very few infants you know have Fairy Godmothers, but we make it a rule that those who have, shall always be distinguished from the crowd. Other-wise our power would not be believed in. No, my little Aglaia, all our Godchildren start from the point you spoke of—'caeteris paribus,' as those dingy black lawyers say—all other things being equal—it is a question now of bestowing extra superfine Fairy gifts."

Aglaia tittered—"I know Sister Euphrosyne is thinking of the christening suppers, and the whipped creams, and the syllabubs!" and away she tripped to the other end of the bay, lest the older Fairies should scold her for impertinence.

"Certainly," pursued Euphrosyne, "I have a great contempt for riches myself. Bah! the idea of all the troublesome as well as wicked things men do in order that they may be able to keep a lumbering thing they call a carriage, to drive them round a dirty town. Just think of that one thing alone! It is hardly credible." And Euphrosyne laid her head by the side of Leila's, and looked up into the deep blue sky.

"Remember," said Ambrosia, from behind, "it is a choice with poor mortals between heavy foot-walking, and the lumbering vehicles you talk of. Perhaps when their legs ache terribly, the carriages are not such bad things. We can hardly judge dispassionately in such a matter, we who can float and fly!" and the delicate Ambrosia, springing up, floated softly round the bay, and then returned smiling to her companions. "It made me almost ill to think of aching legs," observed she, "how I do pity the mortal race!"

"How pretty you looked as the sun shone golden upon your white robe," exclaimed Leila, "It was a sight for a mortal painter to die of!"

"A genius for painting would be a grand Fairy gift," observed Ianthe.

"Too doubtful of success," answered Euphrosyne, "and the Musician's power the same; besides musicians always die young and with exhausted minds. The art is too much for mortal nerves."

"Their atmosphere is too thick," said Leila. "How tired I am of your discussions! Let us sing! Whatever music may be to them, it is food to us."

Then all those beautiful Fairies arose and joining hands on the rocks they sang to the now dying Sun a chorus of Fairy Land! Now and then these ravishing melodies are permitted to reach to mortal ears: chiefly in dreams to the sick and sorrowful, for Fairies have great compassion on such, and allow them a distant taste of this, the most exquisite of their enjoyments.

There was no more discussion that night, nor did they argue much the next morning. There was the rising sun to welcome from the sleeping caves on the eastern side of their country, and the bath to be enjoyed, and their wings to plume, and sweet odours to gather from the early flowers; and the time passed so quickly, they only met to take a hurried leave. "We must understand each other however, before we separate," said Euphrosyne.

"Dear Ianthe, your Gift is Beauty?" "It is." "And mine is Riches," said Euphrosyne. "All the pleasures of life shall be at my Godchild's feet," said another Fairy, laughing. "If that will not ensure happiness, I know not what will." Ambrosia held back—"Your choice, dear Sister?" asked Euphrosyne.

"Come! we have no time to lose."

"It must remain a secret," was the reply. "Our discourse yesterday evening was so thoughtful, so sad, I could not sleep. I arose hours before you this morning, ere daylight streaked the sky. Dear Sisters, how shocked you will be to hear I wept; but now I have determined. If my gift succeed I will tell you all about it, or you shall guess it yourselves; for I now propose that our Fairy Gifts this year shall be a sort of experiment on human happiness. Let us from time to time visit in company our young charges, and let the result—that is, which of our Gifts is proved to confer the greatest amount of happiness, be written in the archives of our kingdom for the future benefit of the mortal race."

A murmur of approbation rose, sweet as the vibration of a harp-chord through the assembly.

There was no time for enquiry about the other gifts: the travelling Fairies arose and beat their gauzy wings upon the western breeze. A melodious rushing was just audible; the distant murmurs of the earthly sea the most resemble that sweet dream of sound. In a few moments the departing sisters became invisible, and those who remained returned to float by the sea shore, or make sweet music in the bowers of their enchanted land.

Time is a very odd sort of thing, dear readers. We neither know whence it comes nor whither it goes;—nay we know nothing about it in fact except that there is one little moment of it called the present, which we have as it were in our hands to make use of—but beyond this we can give no account of, even that little moment. It is ours to use, but not to understand. There is one thing in the world, however, quite as wonderful, and quite as common, and that is, the Wind. Did it never strike you how strange it was that the strongest thing in the world should be invisible? The nice breezes we feel in summer and the roughest blasts we feel in winter in England are not so extremely strong you will say: but I am speaking, besides these, of the winds called hurricanes that arise in the West Indian Islands, and in other places in the world. These dreadful hurricanes have at times done as much mischief as earthquakes and lightning. They tear down the strongest trees, overthrow the firmest houses and