r for a while, his hat against his heart and his
lips muttering an Ave. Reassured by his prayer, or the peace of the
great place, he presently espies the sacristan about to uncover a
picture not often shown. Here is an occasion! The tourists are
gathered, intent upon their Baedekers; he tiptoes up behind them and
kneels by another pillar--for the pillars of a church are his friendly
rocks, touching which he can face the unknown. The curtain is brailed
up, and the blue and crimson, the mournful eyes, the wimple, the
pointed chin, the long idle fingers are revealed upon their golden
background. While the girls flock about papa with his book, and mamma
wonders where we shall have luncheon, Annibale, assured familiar of
Heaven, beatified at no expense to himself, settles down to a quiet
talk with the Mother of God. His attitude is perfect, and so is hers.
The firmament is not to be shaken, but Annibale is not a _farceur_,
nor his Blessed One absurd. Mysteries are all about us. Some are for
the eschatologist and some for the shepherd; some for Patmos and some
for the _podere_. Let our historian remember, in fact, that the
natures into which he invites us to pry are those of the little
divinities of earth and he can't go very far wrong. Nor can we.

That, I am bold to confess, is my own attitude toward a lovely order
of creation. Perhaps I may go on to give him certain hints of
treatment. Nearly all of them, I think, tend to the same point--the
discarding of literature. Literature, being a man's art, is at its
best and also at its worst, in its dealing with women. No man,
perhaps, is capable of writing of women as they really are, though
every man thinks he is. A curious consequence to the history of
fairies has been that literature has recognised no males in that
community, and that of the females it has described it has selected
only those who are enamoured of men or disinclined to them. The fact,
of course, is that the fairy world is peopled very much as our own,
and that, with great respect to Shakespeare, an Ariel, a Puck, a
Titania, a Peas-blossom are abnormal. It is as rare to find a fairy
capable of discerning man as the converse is rare. I have known a
person intensely aware of the Spirits that reside, for instance, in
flowers, in the wind, in rivers and hills, none the less bereft of
any intercourse whatever with these interesting beings by the simple
fact that they themselves were perfectly unconscious of him. It i