of the effort is false. For every fairy tale worth recording at
all is the remnant of a tradition possessing true historical
value;--historical, at least in so far as it has naturally arisen out of
the mind of a people under special circumstances, and arisen not without
meaning, nor removed altogether from their sphere of religious faith. It
sustains afterwards natural changes from the sincere action of the fear
or fancy of successive generations; it takes new color from their manner
of life, and new form from their changing moral tempers. As long as
these changes are natural and effortless, accidental and inevitable, the
story remains essentially true, altering its form, indeed, like a flying
cloud, but remaining a sign of the sky; a shadowy image, as truly a part
of the great firmament of the human mind as the light of reason which it
seems to interrupt. But the fair deceit and innocent error of it cannot
be interpreted nor restrained by a wilful purpose, and all additions to
it by art do but defile, as the shepherd disturbs the flakes of morning
mist with smoke from his fire of dead leaves." Instead of retouching
stories "to suit particular tastes, or inculcate favorite doctrines,"
Ruskin would have the child "know his fairy tale accurately, and have
perfect joy or awe in the conception of it as if it were real; thus he
will always be exercising his power of grasping realities: but a
confused, careless, and discrediting tenure of the fiction will lead to
as confused and careless reading of fact." Still further, Ruskin defends
the vulgarity, or commonness of language, found in many of the tales as
"of a wholesome and harmless kind. It is not, for instance, graceful
English, to say that a thought 'popped into Catherine's head'; but it
nevertheless is far better, as an initiation into literary style, that a
child should be told this than that 'a subject attracted Catherine's
attention.'"

Finally, we cannot forbear adding one more quotation, from the most
delightful of attacks upon the attackers of fairy tales, by Miss
Repplier: "That which is vital in literature or tradition, which has
survived the obscurity and wreckage of the past, whether as legend, or
ballad, or mere nursery rhyme, has survived in right of some intrinsic
merit of its own, and will not be snuffed out of existence by any of our
precautionary or hygienic measures. . . . Puss in Boots is one long record
of triumphant effrontery and deception. An honest