The explorer who penetrates into Central Africa in quest of King Solomon’s mines is impelled by a hope closely akin to that of the Spaniards.  The excavator who digs for the buried treasures of the Incas or of the Egyptians is often led by a desire for the fabulous.  Search is now being made in the western desert of Egypt for a lost city of burnished copper; and the Anglo-Egyptian official is constantly urged by credulous natives to take camels across the wilderness in quest of a town whose houses and temples are of pure gold.  What archaeologist has not at some time given ear to the whispers that tell of long-lost treasures, of forgotten cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea?  It is* not only children who love the tales of Fairyland.  How happily we have read Kipling’s ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill,’ De la Motte Fouque’s ‘Undine,’ Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows,’ or F.W.  Bain’s Indian stories.  The recent fairy plays—­Barry’s “Peter Pan,” Maeterlinck’s “Blue Bird,” and the like—­have been enormously successful.  Say what we will, fairy tales still hold their old power over us, and still we turn to them as a relief from the commonplace.

    Transcriber’s note:  In the original text the word “is” is omitted.

Some of us, failing to find Fairyland upon earth, have transferred it to the kingdom of Death; and it has become the hope for the future.  Each Sunday in church the congregation of business men and hard-worked women set aside the things of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the endless search.  To the rolling notes of the organ they tell the tale of the Elysian Fields:  they take their unfilled desire for Fairyland and adjust it to their deathless hope of Heaven.  They sing of crystal fountains, of streets paved with gold, of meadows dressed with living green where they shall dwell as children who now as exiles mourn.  There everlasting spring abides and never-withering flowers; there ten thousand times ten thousand clad in sparkling raiment throng up the steeps of light.  Here in the church the most unimaginative people cry aloud upon their God for Fairyland.

“The roseate hues of early dawn,
The brightness of the day,
The crimson of the sunset sky,
How fast they fade away! 
Oh, for the pearly gates of Heaven,
Oh, for the golden floor....”

They know no way of picturing the incomprehensible state of the future, and they interpret it, therefore, in terms of the fairy tale.

I am inclined to think that this sovereignty of the fairies is beneficial.  Fairy tales fill the minds of the young with knowledge of the kindly people who will reward with many gifts those that are charitable to the old; they teach a code of chivalry that brings as its reward the love of the beautiful princess in the tower; they tell of dangers overcome by courage and perseverance; they suggest a contact with nature which otherwise might never be developed.  Where angels and archangels overawe by their omnipotence,