very rank, convicted of this imaginary crime, were hurried to the scaffold
or the stake.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Dr. Corbett, Bishop of Oxford
and Norwich, wrote a very humorous satire on the fairy superstition, called
"The Fairies' Farewell, a proper new ballad to be sung or whistled to the
tune of Meadow Brow." Perhaps I cannot better take leave of these very
curious imaginary people, than to employ a couple of stanzas from the
bishop's playful ballad:

"Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days,
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath,
As when the time hath been.

"By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession;
Their songs were Ave Marias,
Their dances were processions;
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or further for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease."

THE HERMIT.

A Traveler was once passing through a great wilderness, in which he
supposed no human being dwelt. But, while riding along in its gloomiest
part, he was surprised to see a hermit, his face covered with a long
beard, that hung down upon his breast, sitting on a stone at the
entrance of what seemed a cave.

The hermit arose as the traveler drew up his horse, and speaking kindly to
him, invited him to accept such refreshment as it was in his power to
offer. The traveler did not refuse, but, dismounting, tied his horse to a
tree, and, following the pious man, entered the narrow door of a little
cave which nature had formed in the side of a mountain. All the hermit had
to set before the traveler, was water from a pure stream that came merrily
leaping down the hill side, and some wild fruit and nuts.

"Tell me," said the traveler, after he had eaten, "why a man with a sound
body, such as you possess, and a sound mind, should hide away from his
fellow-men, in a dreary wild like this?"

"For pious meditation and repentance," replied the hermit. "All is vanity
in the world. Its beauties charm but to allure from heaven. And worse than
this, it is full of evil. Turn where you will, pain, sorrow, and crime meet
your eyes. But here, in the silence of nature, there is nothing to draw the
mind from holy thoughts; there is no danger of falling into temptation. By
pious m