time to the perusal of such stories, we must invest them with, or discover in them some sort of purpose. Nor is this so far to seek, perhaps, as might appear at first sight.

Some, it must be observed, belong to the class which deals with the deeds of heroes—fabling forth the grand all-time lesson of the vigorous struggle of good with evil; the nobility of unflinching self-sacrifice and of devotion to an exalted cause, setting the model for the lowly sister of charity as much as for the victorious leader of armies, and each all the while typical of Him who gave Himself to be the servant of all, and the ransom of all. A German writer rises so inspired from their study that he bursts forth into this pæan:—“Eine Fülle der Göttergeschichte thut sich hier auf, und nirgends lässt sich der eigenthümliche Naturcharacter in Fortbildung des Mythus vollständiger erkennen, als an diesen Alterthümern. Götter und vergötterte Menschen ragen hier, wie an den Wänden der Tempel von Thebe hoch über das gewöhnliche Menschengestalt. Alles hat einen riesenhaften Aufschwung zur himmlischen Welt3.” Subsidiarily to these conceptions of them, stories of this class have the further merit of being one chief means of conveying the scanty data we possess concerning the early history of the people of whose literature they form part5.

Others again may be placed in a useful light by endeavouring to trace in them the journeyings they have made in their transmigration. Benfey, a modern German writer who has employed much time and study “in tracing the Mährchen in their ever-varying forms,” while pointing out as many others have also done6, that the great bulk of our household tales have come to us from the East, and have been spread over Europe in various ways, points out that this was done for the South in great measure through the agency of the Turks; but for the North it was by the Mongolians during their two centuries of ascendancy in Eastern Europe; the Slaves received them from them, and communicated them to the German peoples7.

If therefore you find some tales in one collection bearing a close resemblance with those you have read in another, you should make it a matter of interest to observe what is individual in the character of each, and to trace the points both of diversity and analogy in the mode of expression in which they are clothed, and which will be found just as marked as the difference in costume of the respective peoples who have told them each after their own fashion.

All of them have at least the merit of being, in the main, pictures of life, however overwrought with the fantastic or supernatural element, not ideal embodiments of the perfect motives by which people ought to be actuated, but genre pictures of the modes in which they commonly do act. As such they cannot fail to contain the means of edification, though we are left to look for and discover and apply it for ourselves. To take one instance. The Christian hagiographer could never have written of a hero he was celebrating, as we find it said of Vikramâditja, that as part of his preparation for the battle of life “while learning