"Nay, my friend, if that which I have hinted be the case, it is more than probable that I have the secret of fern-seed, and walk invisible.” "What changes you must find among us! What advances have been made since to Fairy-land!" you went "Changes, indeed! and advances, too, for that matter! but whether on the right road is another question. However, of this I can assure you, gentle reader, that I would I were back again in Fairy-land. I see nothing here to tempt me to linger among you." "Then why do you linger?" "I only wait to see if it be a hopeless task to speak to the youth of the rising generation, as I spake to their forefathers. I would fain learn whether it be possible to excite their sympathies in behalf of anything but themselves; whether they have yet patience to glean the lessons of wisdom, which lurk beneath the surface of legendary tales, and the chronicles of the wild and supernatural; whether their hearts can be moved to noble and chivalrous feelings, and to shake off the hard, cold, calculating, worldly, selfish temper of the times, by being brought into more immediate contact with the ideal, the imaginary, and the romantic, than has been the fashion of late years." "In plain English, then, good Master Churne, you desire to ascertain whether a race that has been glutted with Peter Parley and Penny Magazines, and such like stores of (so called) useful knowledge, will condescend to read a Fable and its moral, or to interest themselves with the grotesque nonsense, the palpable, fantastic absurdities, the utter impossibilities of a Tale of Enchantment ?” "Such is my object." "Well, we have lived to see a tunnel under the Thames, and they are talking of a canal across the isthmus of Darien. But your scheme is a wild one." "I do not think so," "And suppose you can find readers, is it your object to retail those 'hundred merry pranks' of Fairy-land, of which Bishop Corbet tells us that you are the depositary?" 66 I shall be better able to answer your question, gentle reader, when I know how far your patience has carried you through the ensuing pages. Till then farewell." |