We rejoice to know that there are some amongst them who do not undertake their mission of mercy solely from pecuniary motives, but who are imbued with the spirit of the Master Himself, and who do all as in His sight.

These helpless ones have been entrusted to them that they may, if possible, be restored.

Good old George Herbert wrote

'That none doth build a stately habitation,
But he that means to dwell therein;

What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is man?'

The temple may be in ruins, the soul a wreck, but again it may be restored to former grandeur and beauty.

Our asylums should conduce to this end by the intelligence, order, energy, and kindliness with which commands are given. A true ruler or master,' says an eminent writer, 'is to his dependants what music is to an army, where every head is thrown back, every limb is strong, and every eye flashes living fire, when the tones of the inspiring battle march bursts upon the ear; a loving heart, a commanding voice, a strong hand, these should be the dower of the merciful ruler.'

Men and women are needed in our asylums who are superior to the mass we see around us,-such as can inspire respect and implicit, child-like trust in the hearts of their charges. When governors and those in power are more faithful, a spirit of loyal obedience will be kindled amongst subordinates, and patients will no longer have to suffer from the caprice, tyranny, and eye-service of the attendant.

Above all we must not forget to recognise the fact of the supremacy of the one great Master. Faithful and true service will come from those who recognise this important truth, until it becomes a fixed and noble principle of action.

We cannot doubt but that He who marks the lilies and notes the fall of the sparrow cares much more for the creatures into whom He has breathed the breath of life; and there are some employed in our asylums who would do well to remember God's cognizance of the cruelty shown to His ancient Hebrew people by the eastern despot. I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters, for I know their sorrows, and am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.' May many Pinels and Forbes Winslows arise in our land to exemplify the mighty influence and magic of love in the treatment of the insane, and many kind, noble, and compassionate souls like Caroline Fry, Sarah Martin, and John Howard follow the example of Him of whom it is recorded that when He saw the poor lunatic, 'Jesus had compassion on him and healed him.'

WORKINGTON-CUM-WEARING AND THE FAIRY

FOREST.

NCE upon a time, there lived in the township of Workington-cum-Wearing, the blacksmith, John Strongitharm, with his good wife Margaret, and their children Winifred and Walter. Poor but industrious and cheerful, they endeavoured to do their duty to their neighbours and to live lives free from reproach; and so they did for a long time, with such success that they were in good favour with almost all in the town who had any acquaintance with them.

The town of Workington-cum-Wearing was as wretched a hole, to all appearance, as the worst of the most squalid and ugly towns that you could find even in the black country, or in Lancashire, and that is saying sufficient, I can assure you. Houses of all shapes except such as are beautiful and noble, lined the sides of dark and dirty streets, over which hung a perpetual cloud of smoke, and throughout which prevailed a constant reek of cesspools mingled with foul exhalations from the adjacent river into which flowed all the defilements of drainage and manufacture. Judging by the look of everything about the town, one would be tempted to conclude that beauty, or poetry, or real cleanliness, even, had not the smallest corner in the minds of the inhabitants; that the deity in whose honour all their structures were built was unmitigated Prose; that filthy coal smoke was the incense they burned in worshipping him, and that street-slutch and dirt were the favourite offerings they laid upon his altars. And yet whilst everything seemed thus prosaic, hard, unsymmetrical, shabby, commonplace, and foul, every now and again the most remarkable, romantic, I might almost say magical occurrences took place in Workington-cum-Wearing; and the township certainly lay on the very edge of, if not actually within, the great Fairy Forest.

I am well aware that in hinting that such was the situation of the town in which John Strongitharm, the blacksmith, resided, I suggest, of course, much more than can be credited, or even understood, by the more hard-headed and statisticalminded of my readers. The squalor and commonplace of Workington require nothing to make them believable; every one adopts them as a matter of course. But this Fairy Forest! If it were only a patch of valuable timber; if it were but susceptible of being sawn up into good useful planks, it would, no doubt, commend itself to the approval of all. And yet I am bound to assert it as my unshaken belief,-I having spent in it myself many hundreds of delightful hours,-that

it was one of the most valuable and most substantial forests in the whole world; and although I may not succeed in carrying all my readers along with me in this conviction, for myself I abide most steadfastly in it, and shall certainly do so to my dying day.

I know well all the disadvantages I labour under, and how greatly I shall lower myself in the estimation of some, when I state that one of the most prominent peculiarities of this great Forest, was the uncertainty everywhere confessed as to its boundaries. It would appear, even, that on some days, or to some persons, it was much nearer than on others, and that it covered ground one day which it left unoccupied the next. The gate by which access was gained to it, would certainly be visible and obvious at one time, and quite invisible and undiscoverable at another. Even when visible, this availed nothing except it was close at hand; and not then, unless also the key was seen in the keyhole. It was no little perplexing, and vexing too, to see the gate before you one week, look whichever way you might; and then again not to catch sight of it for weeks, for months, or, it might be, for years and years. Two persons might be in one bedroom, in one workshop, or walking together arm in arm, and the Fairy Forest might be undeniably all around the one, but utterly invisible to the other. If the one from whom the Forest thus hid itself, had had much experience in it-if he were (so to speak) a Fairy Forester-he would recognise, by a light in the eye, and by a flush in the face, and by a sign upon the lips of his companion, that the hour of the Fairy Forest was upon him. It was often quite touching to see how kindly-hearted old people, who had not been able to discern the gate of the Forest, unless on the mountain, for long, hard, eye-bedimming, bodyenfeebling years, would smile faintly, and forbearingly say to each other, Hush, they are in the Forest, do not disturb them,' when they saw the signs of the Forest hour upon children or groups of happy young people around them.

Now, the law of the Fairy Forest was thus :-you might be at work or at play; might be in the house or the shop, the street or the field; suddenly, without forethought on your part, the gate of the Forest would stand just before you. If you saw not alone the gate, but also the key in the lock of it, all was well. You then, of course, took the key between your fingers and turned it; straightway the gate would swing wide open without a sound, and out of it would rush forth in countless swarms, and in all their varied magnificence, the trees of the Forest, and as swiftly as an eye-glance take up their several stations around you. A veritable forest, indeed,

with trees of many kinds and sizes; and not with trees only, but also with streams and spacious lakes, sunny green glades and dense leafy recesses, and everywhere the colours and the odours of flowers, and the songs of birds, the movement of wings in the air, and the quick plying of busy feet on the ground, and the glancing of busy fins, and the flashing of scales in the waters.

Distressing to the man of accurate and scientific mind, though this uncertainty as to the Forest boundaries must be, I am compelled reluctantly still to dwell upon it, whilst noticing that I found some diversity of opinion in the town as to the right explanation of this peculiarity. It was generally held that the Fairy Forest actually came and went away again; that it covered acres of ground one day, which afterwards it left bare. Bare enough, I can testify, the spare ground always looked in that hideous township, when none of that glorious Forest foliage waved visibly over it. But others were of the opinion, in which, for reasons of my own, I shared, that the Forest was really at all times all over the district; that the town was, in fact, embosomed within it; that its roots were too deep in the soil ever to be withdrawn; that it never spread and never retired; but that it and all things that were of it had the property of becoming at pleasure visible, palpable, and audible, or the reverse. At pleasure, I say, but at pleasure of the Fairy Forest,-by no means at the pleasure of the inhabitants of Workington-cum-Wearing. To them it came, and it went from them, not as they, but as it pleased; unless, indeed, they forced their way into by using unlawful enchantments, about which I shall have more to say by-andby.

Access, or at any rate lawful access, to the Forest was gained, as I have said, only by the gate; and not by the gate except when the key was in it. But, to children, entrance was always obvious and easy. I never saw a child in those parts, unless it were a very young one indeed, who had not evidently often been in it. This land of fairy usually continued very accessible up to a period lying between fifteen and five-andtwenty years of age, according to the more or less favourable cast of mind of the entrant; and was a favourite and frequent resort with most young persons until the cares of life, the engrossments of business, the rust of idleness, or the canker of vice, began to be severe upon them. I met with only a very few people in middle life, and none in old age, who still were able to turn, or to find the key, or even to discern, on level ground, the gate of the Forest. The generality of persons, after the bloom of youth was rubbed off them, ceased

to believe in the Forest at all. Mention it in their hearing, and you evoked only a scornful smile; though some, regretting their loss of the key, grumbled bitterly, and groaned in complaint; and others shook their heads with an evident melancholy. The class first alluded to were by far the most numerous; a gesture of contempt was all they had to bestow on the thought of the Forest; or else a cold smile of incredulity, as disbelieving its very existence, and treating all their own actual experiences in earlier life as ridiculous dreams. Yet I often noticed a want of thoroughness, a sort of hollowness, in such denials; enough to convince me that if the gate, as of old, were to present itself once more, they would rush forward to grasp the key and be only too glad of it. As for others, I have known them decline into listlessness, and even sink into a pining sickness, and grow weary of their lives, solely because they had ceased to see their way into the Forest, as they used to see it in the golden period of youth. More than one foolish and wicked person has been known to commit suicide, entirely because the key of the Forest was no longer discoverable.

What it was that made the Forest so charming a place to be in, and so much to be regretted in its absence, cannot be described with any reasonable brevity. I might, and gladly could, fill pages upon pages, and indeed volumes upon volumes, with an account of things seen, heard, and done in the Forest; but a few hints are all that there will be room for here. The exhaustless variety of the experiences met with in the Forest may be judged of when it is explained that no two persons, on emerging from it, ever gave precisely similar accounts of the objects and occurrences they had met with in its interior. There was, no doubt, much general agreement about the leading features; but there was little or none concerning those smaller details in which, nevertheless, the essence of the interest of a narrative abides. Speaking loosely, it may be affirmed that the Forest was one thing to very young children, another thing to growing lads and girls, and still something else to the youths and the maidens. If you ask me to which of these it was most delightful, I shall be wholly unable to tell you. But I know well to whom it looked unspeakably the most glorious; and they were the visitants of the mountain of which I shall speak afterwards, often poor and decayedlooking people, from whose faces for half a century or more the precious dews of youth had departed.

When a very young child turned the key of the gate of the Forest, which always on first seeing it, it did as by instinct,its experiences would be something of this nature. The most