ort pause, "Do
you know I have formed a plan!"

"How delightful!" cried Pipalee. "Another gala!"

"Pooh, surely even you must be tired with such levities: the spirit of
the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity
proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether." The queen said this
with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the "Society for the Diffusion
of General Stupefaction" had been recently established among the
fairies, and its tracts had driven all the light reading out of the
market. "The Penny Proser" had contributed greatly to the increase of
knowledge and yawning, so visibly progressive among the courtiers.

"No," continued Nymphalin; "I have thought of something better than
galas. Let us travel!"

Pipalee clasped her hands in ecstasy.

"Where shall we travel?"

"Let us go up the Rhine," said the queen, turning away her head. "We
shall be amazingly welcomed; there are fairies without number all the
way by its banks, and various distant connections of ours whose nature
and properties will afford interest and instruction to a philosophical
mind."

"Number Nip, for instance," cried the gay Pipalee.

"The Red Man!" said the graver Nymphalin.

"Oh, my queen, what an excellent scheme!" and Pipalee was so lively
during the rest of the night that the old fairies in the honeysuckle
insinuated that the lady of honour had drunk a buttercup too much of the
Maydew.

CHAPTER II. THE LOVERS.

I WISH only for such readers as give themselves heart and soul up to
me,--if they begin to cavil I have done with them; their fancy should
put itself entirely under my management; and, after all, ought they not
to be too glad to get out of this hackneyed and melancholy world, to be
run away with by an author who promises them something new?

From the heights of Bruges, a Mortal and his betrothed gazed upon the
scene below. They saw the sun set slowly amongst purple masses of cloud,
and the lover turned to his mistress and sighed deeply; for her cheek
was delicate in its blended roses, beyond the beauty that belongs to
the hues of health; and when he saw the sun sinking from the world, the
thought came upon him that _she_ was his sun, and the glory that
she shed over his life might soon pass away into the bosom of the
"ever-during Dark." But against the clouds rose one of the many spires
that characterize the town of Bruges; and on that spire, tapering into
heaven, rested the eyes of Gertrude