talogue at 200 guineas.

The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical associations. We have
read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman
who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, possessed a
beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine
moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which
seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that
the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After
watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to
and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing
on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an
elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of
the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of
many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left
them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady
discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence
that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had
returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old
woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as
holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into
a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed.
In gratitude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and
protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full
moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet
musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who

Hold each strange tale devoutly true.

For as the poet says:

What though no credit doubting wits may give,
The fair and innocent shall still believe.

Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins,
himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Tasso:--

Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders that he sung.

All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative.

And visions as poetic eyes avow
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.

The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles
like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf.

"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist.
"Never Sir." "_I_ ha