For

It should be also noted with what exquisite propriety the churchman is made to add the appellation of "grace." this, in truth, is the same notion, advanced to theology. Accordingly the divine grace has always been, with the Italians, an objective present from the Deity, received passively; with the Teutons as with the Jesuits, it is subjective, personal, derived immediately by each one from his own acts of will; with the Celts, it is relational, resultant from those extreme contraries, the fruit of a concurrence of the will of Iman with the will of God. Hence the three divisions of polemics on this subject, made so famous by the names of Necessary, Sufficient, and Efficacious. And the torrents not alone of ink but of human tears and blood that have been shed in the contention of these views with one another-and shed on the assumption that they were options of volition, instead of being necessities of organization-suggest a melancholy comment on the history of the intellect in all its other walks, without exception, to this day.

But to return to the primitive conceptions of physical nature, the Teutons, in turn, regarded its phenomena as produced, not by virtues or powers, but by persons. The open or mechanical and irresistible they gave to giants; the latent, whether chemical or organic, to dwarfs. The latter were an effort to conceive, in such phenomena, the seeming disproportion between effect and cause, by minimizing the mass, for want of power for pure abstraction. Accordingly the diminution went on in double ratio of the complexity of the subject and the culture of the Teutons, until it rarefied to the sylphs and salamanders of the Rosicrucians, and finally evaporated into elves or ghosts, which were the supreme term

of this series of superstition. And what confirms all this is, that the same organic law pursues the race, as before noted, into philosophy and their highest geniuses. For the corpuscles of Newton and the monads of Leibnitz-containing, as the latter of the designations specifies, all the properties of nature in the individuals severally, and producing by their combination but the bare interchange of mutual plunder these atoms and monads of those eminent philosophers are but a refined form of the dwarfs of their rude ancestors. Accordingly they all have, as remarked, the like properties, and being the elements of things, reflect the interior of the imaginers; for it is really this complexional introversion upon self that prompts, and fits for, the analysis of foreign bodies also. The Teutons thus endowed with their own sympathies and appetites the forces of the earth, and impersonated them as dwarfs. Hence it is that the German section characterize these creatures by the names of Ground-manikins, Stille-volk, Kleine-volk; that is, silent and little people all physical attributions, it is to be remarked; whereas the epithets assigned the fairies by the Irish are all social.

This third class of creatures, in fine, denote the Principles -the laws of relation between Nature and Man-upon which has been constructed the supreme system called society. They accordingly are fully abstract, and intermediate in all things, down to even the comparative dimensions of the stature. Equally aloof from the extremes of giant and dwarf, they are curiously conformed to the same harmonic medium which nature herself, through her primeval oscillations, as between mollusks and megalosaurians, attained progressively at last in man. But the immediate object of this little

exposition was to indicate precisely the nature of the dwarfs ; and the order of the sketch, as of the whole dissertation, may also furnish, at the close, a sort of image, even physical, of the undulating march of the law of progression in society, upon which the whole volume has proceeded, though empirically ; each race of the series retaining its relative position, and all propelling the new billow into action and ascendance.

The Teutonic dwarfs, moreover, have three distinctive characters: they are solitary in habits, skilled in metals, and rich in gold. In all these, as well as stature, they are contrasted with the fairies. The latter are imagined of the ordinary human size, as far at least as congruous with their elegance and agility; otherwise the French would have paid an awkward compliment in giving their prime heroes of chivalry the title "fairy." It has been shewn that the fairies live in policied societies, being solitary but by degradation, as in the siabħra. They have a horror of mines and a disdain of money, the use they put the latter to being a proverbial mockery. No notion could have therefore been well more preposterous than jumbling the fairies with the Scandinavian dwarfs. There only was a mixture, and merely geographical, analogous to that of the corresponding races; and some examples of this state will make the demonstration crucial.

The infiltration of the dwarfs or other Teutonic demons into the Celtic countries keeps a ratio to distance. The elves commingled with the fairies in diminishing proportion, through the Shetland, the Orkney Islands, and along the coast of Scotland. Here they dwindled to some two or three stragglers at the utmost. The Brownie, as remarked, was

a dwarf in size and solitude; but both these qualities may have been adaptations to his household functions, and he remained in the moral unequivocally Celtic. The like might be said of the Ourisk despite its mischief, since the mischief was committed by mere wit, not force or fraud. But the Kelpie or water-horse is unmistakeably Scandinavian, at the same time by the form, the habitat, and the rapacity.

In Ireland, which was entered by these strangers through the English (the slight and sea-board settlements of the Danes could have left none), the fairies are degraded into dwarfs in the east. Mr. Keightley, in his sprightly yet erudite book on fairies, remarks with wonder that it is only in his native province of Leinster that these beings have been supposed to fall below the human stature. He should have seen that it was but logical the fairies of the "Pale" should, like their authors, be bastardized by the commixture with the Gothic analogues. The like consistency prevails on the English confines of the Welsh, where the fairies are described, it seems, as little fair people." More characteristic still, the fairy money is here sterling-sterling in the actual sense, as in the primary one, of Easterling. The creole progeny of the English were too good men of business to suffer a depreciated currency upon their border. This particular recalls the sole case of a dwarf in Ireland; the leprechaun is, besides, solitary and noted for his cash.

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1

The name also

1 This writer is absolutely without theory on the subject. Such, it is true, was the case with all before him. But he has the exceptional confidence to think that for him it was reserved to close the doctrine of the fairies. Future writers, says he naïvely, can but contribute mere facts. • The foregoing pages are respectfully presented to his notice.

speaks his origin, being a corruption of the English "lubberkin." The Irish pooka is a like euphonization of "Puck"; and the character-though modified more deeply than the name, into a gloomy, lubberly, mis-shapen creature, skulking in dark recesses, and guarding usually a hidden treasure -aptly designates the Irish preconception of the English.1

Miss

1 The Highlanders, it seems, have a similar impression. Sinclair somewhere states that, on seeing their moorlands crossed by a person with a tottering or awkward gait, they are wont to exclaim : "There goes an idiot or an Englishman." The notion is quite natural in a Celtic people anywhere, and above all, where the elasticity is heightened by mountain exercise. It is thus that English people are known in Paris at any distance. The German is distinguished by the opposite rigidity, which is the duly kindred extreme of the oscillation. The Gothic trunk is as if either slung or stuck upon the hips. These anatomical peculiarities consort profoundly with the theory. For it is the nervous system that gives precision to the movements, and even guidance to the well-proportioned growth of the body. Where this archetype is feeble, the dominant muscle forms awkwardly, and shews in every motion the tiraillement of its natural action. Hence the tottering alluded to, which is invariable in imbeciles, as also in the accidental case of intoxication. The Greeks symbolized the contrast in Apollo and Hercules.

Such is likewise the explanation of a trait in fact concurrent, the abnormal length of loin that marks the Teuton, as it does the Turk; not the habit of horse-riding, as has been supposed ludicrously: for brutes too present it in the more predacious, as the feline family. In fact, the spinal chord is the region of the nervous tissue appropriate to the muscular system, and must therefore predominate, along with it, the brain. The horsemanship, no doubt, is a concomitant circumstance, and not alone for warfare, but for travel, nay for exercise. A race of this description cannot take it much on foot. Hence the Teutons have never practised games of agility. Even the children play in England but by dragging at each other, or by rolling the body animal fashion along the sward, or by swinging on the iron balustrades of the London parks. For the preponderance of power is towards the arms, as in the quadru