perhaps the human beings
in the tale are scarcely done justice to. We feel as if Sybil and
Basil, and the Gipsy Mother and Christian, had scarcely room to
breathe in the few pages that they are crowded into; there is
certainly too much "subject" here for the size of the canvas!--but
Father Hedgehog takes up little space, and every syllable about him is
as keenly pointed as the spines on his back. The method by which he
silenced awkward questions from any of his family is truly delightful:

"Will the donkey be cooked when he is fat?" asked my mother.

"I smell valerian," said my father, on which she put out her nose,
and he ran at it with his prickles. He always did this when he was
annoyed with any of his family; and though we knew what was coming,
we are all so fond of valerian, we could never resist the
temptation to sniff, just on the chance of there being some about.

Then, the following season, we find the Hedgehog Son grown into a
parent, and, with the "little hoard of maxims" he had inherited,
checking the too inquiring minds of his offspring:

"What is a louis d'or?" cried three of my children; and "What is
brandy?" asked the other four.

"I smell valerian," said I; on which they poked out their seven
noses, and I ran at them with my spines, for a father who is not an
Encyclopaedia on all fours must adopt _some_ method of checking the
inquisitiveness of the young.

One more quotation must be made from the end of the story, where
Father Hedgehog gives a list of the fates that befell his children:

Number one came to a sad end. What on the face of the wood made him
think of pheasants' eggs I cannot conceive. I'm sure I never said
anything about them! It was whilst he was scrambling along the edge
of the covert, that he met the Fox, and very properly rolled
himself into a ball. The Fox's nose was as long as his own, and he
rolled my poor son over and over with it, till he rolled him into
the stream. The young urchins swim like fishes, but just as he was
scrambling to shore, the Fox caught him by the waistcoat and killed
him. I do hate slyness!

It seems scarcely conceivable that any one can sympathize sufficiently
with a Hedgehog as to place himself in the latter's position, and
share its paternal anxieties,--but I think Julie was able to do so,
or, at any rate, her translations of the Hedgepig's whines