ssion in that heart where all seemed known
and discovered; which is an expression of thought, observation, or
invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and
great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; which
speaks in its own peculiar style which is found to be also that of the
whole world, a style new and old, easily contemporary with all time."
Immediately some of the great fairy tales stand out as answering to
this test--_Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk,
Cinderella, Jack the Giant-Killer_,--which has been said to be the
epitome of the whole life of man--_Beauty and the Beast_, and a crowd
of others. Any fairy tale which answers to the test of a real classic
must, like these, show itself to contain for the child a permanent
enrichment of the mind.

Fairy tales must have certain qualities which belong to all literature
as a fine art, whether it is the literature of knowledge or the
literature of power. Literature is not the book nor is it life; but
literature is the sense of life, whose artist is the author, and the
medium he uses is words, language. It is good art when his sense of
life is truth, and fine art when there is beauty in that truth. The
one essential beauty of literature is in its essence and does not
depend upon any decoration. As words are the medium, literature will
distinguish carefully among them and use them as the painter, for
particular lights and shades. According to Pater literature must have
two qualities, mind and soul. Literature will have mind when it has
that architectural sense of structure which foresees the end in the
beginning and keeps all the parts related in a harmonious unity. It
will have soul when it has that "vagrant sympathy" which makes it come
home to us and which makes it suggest what it does not say. Test the
_Tale of Cinderella_ by this standard. As to mind, it makes one think
of a bridge in which the very keystone of the structure is the
condition that Cinderella return from the ball by the stroke of
twelve. And its "vagrant sympathy" is quite definite enough to reach a
maid of five, who remarked: "If I'd have been Cinderella, I wouldn't
have helped those ugly sisters, would you?"

If the fairy tale stands the test of literature it must have proved
itself, not only a genuine classic according to Sainte-Beuve's
standard, and a tale possessing qualities of mind and soul according
to Pater's _Style_, but it must have s