erse! Not a nervous and enfeebled
sensibility, yielding itself up to a diseased taste for pain.--No child
fascinated with fear, and straining its eyes to take in more horror. But
here the unconquerable consciousness of strong life throws itself with
an unmastered glee of battle, right into the thick of its mortal
adversaries, to slay, and strip, and bind to its own triumphant
chariot-wheels.

The Upper Lusatian Highlander, turned poet, dreaming at his discretion,
amuses himself with converting terror and madness into merriment, and
reconciles conflicting elements of invention--with an overpowering
harmony?--No. But, by subjugating them all alike to one imperious lord,
viz. to himself;--to his own pleasure. Hence, in the Traditions and
Tales, in which he embodies his illusory creed of the Invisible, there
is engendered an esthetical species, which waits, perhaps, for a name
with us, and might accept that of the _Ghastly_, or at least, of the
_Ghostly-Humorous_, the _Gay-Horrible_. The story of the PRIEST'S WELL
soars boldly upon this pinion; that of the WILL-O'-THE-WISP HUSSAR has
gone stark-raving in the same grimly-mirthful temper. The mind in which
Burns imagined and chaunted his TAM-O'-SHANTER, is right down Upper
Lusatian, in this key. Our Elves, however, are not yet witches.

The kinds of the spirits confine, upon every side, with one another, and
the boundary lines vanish. Within the circumscription of the Fairy
domain, an indeterminable difference appears betwixt the truest Fairies
and the Dwarfs. The two sorts, or the two names, are sometimes brought
into glaring opposition. Again, like factions made friends, they blend
for a time indistinguishably. So, in the Persian belief, the ugly
_Dios_, who may represent the Dwarfs of our west, are--under one aspect
of the Fable--the implacable _cannibal_ foes--under another,--the loving
spouses of the beautiful Peris. Comparing the Fairies of our two former
tales, and the Dwarfs of this, the reader will probably see in THOSE,
the daintier, the more delicate: in THESE, a little more hardness of
nature.

The great length of the story precludes all thoughts (be the
opportunities what they may, and these are not deficient) of bringing
its illustration from other expositors--Teutonic or otherwise-of the
Fairy Lore.

THE DWARF'S WELL.

"Nicholas Stringstriker was the most popular ale-house fiddler for a
good twenty miles round, and consequently quite indispensable at al