gods, and winds, and stars. In Perrault's fairy-land is room for all of them, and room for children too, who wander hither out of their own world of fancy, and half hope that the Sleeping Beauty dwells behind the hedge of yew, or think to find the dangerous distaff in some dismantled chamber.

The Histoires et Contes du Tems Passé must clearly have been successful, though scant trace of their success remains in the criticism of the time[22]. We may measure it by the fleet of other books of fairy tales which 'pursue the triumph and partake the gale.' The Contes de Fées of Mad. La Comtesse de M—— (Murat) were published by Barbin in 1698. How little the manner resembles Perrault's 'fairy-way of writing,' how much it deserves the censure of the Abbé de Villiers, may be learned from the opening sentence of Le Parfait Amour. 'Dans un de ces agréables pais qui sont dependans de l'Empire des Fées, regnoit la redoutable Danamo, elle estoit scavante dans son art, cruelle dans ses actions, et glorieuse de l'honneur d'estre descendue de la célèbre Calipso, dont les charmes eurent la gloire et le pouvoir en arrestant le fameux Ulisse, de triompher de la prudence des vainqueurs de Troye.'

The second story, Anguillette, is so far natural, that it contains a friendly Eel (as in the Mangaian legend of the Eel-lover of Ina); but this Eel is a fairy, condemned to wear the form of a fish, for certain days in each month. These narratives are almost unreadable, and scarcely keep a trace of the popular tradition. The tales of Madame d'Aulnoy, on the other hand, introduced the White Cat, the Yellow Dwarf, Finette Cendron, and Le Mouton to literature and the stage, where they survive in pantomime and féerie. Beauty and the Beast first appears, at the immoderate length of three hundred and sixty-two pages, in Les Contes Marins (La Haye, 1740) by Madame de Villeneuve.

Literary Fairy Tales flourished all through the eighteenth century in the endless Cabinet de Fées. As for Perrault's Tales, they were republished at the Hague, in 1742, with illustrations by Fokke. In 1745, they appeared, with Fokke's vignettes, and with an English translation. An English version, translated by Mr. Samber, printed for J. Pote, was advertised, Mr. Austin Dobson tells me, in the Monthly Chronicle, March 1729. There have been innumerable editions, often splendidly equipped and illustrated, down to the present date. This little book alone, of all Charles Perrault's labours, has won 'the land of matters unforgot.' Odysseus, Figaro, and Othello are not more certain to be immortal than Hop o' my Thumb, Puss in Boots, and Blue Beard, the heroes whom Charles Nodier so pleasantly called 'the Ulysses, the Figaro, and the Othello of children.'