se of
mere earthly parentage--the hawks and hounds which they employed in
their chase were of the first race. At their daily banquets, the board
was set forth with a splendour which the proudest kings of the earth
dared not aspire to; and the hall of their dancers echoed to the most
exquisite music. But when viewed by the eye of a seer the illusion
vanished. The young knights and beautiful ladies showed themselves as
wrinkled carles and odious hags--their wealth turned into
slate-stones--their splendid plate into pieces of clay fantastically
twisted--and their victuals, unsavoured by salt (prohibited to them, we
are told, because an emblem of eternity), became tasteless and
insipid--the stately halls were turned into miserable damp caverns--all
the delights of the Elfin Elysium vanished at once. In a word, their
pleasures were showy, but totally unsubstantial--their activity
unceasing, but fruitless and unavailing--and their condemnation appears
to have consisted in the necessity of maintaining the appearance of
constant industry or enjoyment, though their toil was fruitless and
their pleasures shadowy and unsubstantial. Hence poets have designed
them as "_the crew that never rest_." Besides the unceasing and useless
bustle in which these spirits seemed to live, they had propensities
unfavourable and distressing to mortals.

One injury of a very serious nature was supposed to be constantly
practised by the fairies against "the human mortals," that of carrying
off their children, and breeding them as beings of their race.
Unchristened infants were chiefly exposed to this calamity; but adults
were also liable to be abstracted from earthly commerce, notwithstanding
it was their natural sphere. With respect to the first, it may be easily
conceived that the want of the sacred ceremony of introduction into the
Christian church rendered them the more obnoxious to the power of those
creatures, who, if not to be in all respects considered as fiends, had
nevertheless, considering their constant round of idle occupation,
little right to rank themselves among good spirits, and were accounted
by most divines as belonging to a very different class. An adult, on the
other hand, must have been engaged in some action which exposed him to
the power of the spirits, and so, as the legal phrase went, "taken in
the manner." Sleeping on a fairy mount, within which the Fairy court
happened to be held for the time, was a very ready mode of obta