I have said, too, that these fairy superstitions seemed to me to accord with the nature of English scenery.  They suit these small landscapes, which are divided by honeysuckled hedges into sheltered fields and meadows, where the grass is mingled with daisies, buttercups, and harebells.  When I first found myself among English scenery, I was continually reminded of the sweet pastoral images which distinguish their fairy mythology; and when for the first time a circle in the grass was pointed out to me as one of the rings where they were formerly supposed to have held their moonlight revels, it seemed for a moment as if fairy-land were no longer a fable.  Brown, in his Britannia’s Pastorals, gives a picture of the kind of scenery to which I allude: 

“------A pleasant mead
Where fairies often did their measures tread;
Which in the meadows make such circles green,
As if with garlands it had crowned been. 
Within one of these rounds was to be seen
A hillock rise, where oft the fairy queen
At twilight sat.”

And there is another picture of the same, in a poem ascribed to Ben Jonson.

  “Bywells and rills in meadows green,
    We nightly dance our heyday guise,
  And to our fairy king and queen
    We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.”

Indeed, it seems to me, that the older British poets, with that true feeling for nature which distinguishes them, have closely adhered to the simple and familiar imagery which they found in these popular superstitions; and have thus given to their fairy mythology those continual allusions to the farm-house and the dairy, the green meadow and the fountain-head, that fill our minds with the delightful associations of rural life.  It is curious to observe how the most beautiful fictions have their origin among the rude and ignorant.  There is an indescribable charm about the illusions with which chimerical ignorance once clothed every subject.  These twilight views of nature are often more captivating than any which are revealed by the rays of enlightened philosophy.  The most accomplished and poetical minds, therefore, have been fain to search back into these accidental conceptions of what are termed barbarous ages, and to draw from them their finest imagery and, machinery.  If we look through our most admired poets, we shall find that their minds have been impregnated by these popular fancies, and that those have succeeded best who have adhered closest to the simplicity of their rustic originals.  Such is the case with Shakspeare in his Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which so minutely describes the employments and amusements of fairies, and embodies all the notions concerning them which were current among the vulgar.  It is thus that poetry in England has echoed back every rustic note, softened into perfect melody; it is thus that it has spread its charms over every-day life, displacing nothing, taking things as it found them, but tinting them up with its own magical hues, until every green hill and fountain-head, every fresh meadow, nay, every humble flower, is full of song and story.