ch as shopkeepers have done in Regent
Street. Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up his goods behind strong
shutters, so that no one might see them after closing hours. Now he
leaves everything open to the eye and turns the gas on. So the fairies,
who used to lock up their sleeping beauties in impenetrable thickets, now
leave them in the most public places they can find, as knowing that they
will there most certainly escape notice. Look at De Hooghe; look at "The
Pilgrim's Progress," or even Shakespeare himself--how long they slept
unawakened, though they were in broad daylight and on the public
thoroughfares all the time. Look at Tabachetti, and the masterpieces he
left at Varallo. His figures there are exposed to the gaze of every
passer-by; yet who heeds them? Who, save a very few, even know of their
existence? Look again at Gaudenzio Ferrari, or the "Danse des Paysans,"
by Holbein, to which I ventured to call attention in the _Universal
Review_. No, no; if a thing be in Central Africa, it is the glory of
this age to find it out; so the fairies think it safer to conceal their
_proteges_ under a show of openness; for the schoolmaster is much abroad,
and there is no hedge so thick or so thorny as the dulness of culture.

It may be, again, that ever so many years hence, when Mr. Darwin's earth-
worms shall have buried Oropa hundreds of feet deep, some one sinking a
well or making a railway-cutting will unearth these chapels, and will
believe them to have been houses, and to contain the _exuviae_ of the
living forms that tenanted them. In the meantime, however, let us return
to a consideration of the chapel as it may now be seen by any one who
cares to pass that way.

The work consists of about forty figures in all, not counting Cupids, and
is divided into four main divisions. First, there is the large public
sitting-room or drawing-room of the College, where the elder young ladies
are engaged in various elegant employments. Three, at a table to the
left, are making a mitre for the Bishop, as may be seen from the model on
the table. Some are merely spinning or about to spin. One young lady,
sitting rather apart from the others, is doing an elaborate piece of
needlework at a tambour-frame near the window; others are making lace or
slippers, probably for the new curate; another is struggling with a
letter, or perhaps a theme, which seems to be giving her a good deal of
trouble, but which, when done, will, I