Story-telling has grown into a means of expression with a gamut as wide as that of poetry, which is as wide as that of humanity. 'It is literature,' says Wilde, 'that shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest'; and the same art that helps us to laze away a summer afternoon is a key that lets us into the hearts of men we have never seen, and not infrequently opens our own to us, when, in the bustle of existence, we have gone out and found ourselves unable to return. It is a Gyges' ring with which, upon our finger, we can go about the world and mingle in the business of men to whom we would not bow, or who would not bow to us. It breaks the gold or iron collars of our classes and sets each man free as a man to understand all other men soever. It opens our eyes like Shelley's to see that life-- 'like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.' We become conscious of that radiance when, by this art made free of time, we can dream the dreams of the Pharaohs, pray with the hermits in the Thebaid, and send our hazardous guesses like seeking dogs into the dim forests of futurity. Our eyes may fitly shine, and we become as little children in brief resting-hours out of the grown-up world, when this art makes those tints ours that we never knew, and sends us, divested of our monotones, to choose among all the glittering colours of mankind. And if we are not listeners only, but have ourselves something to fit with wings and to send out to find those men who will know the whispering sound of its flight and take it to themselves, how much do we not owe to this most manifold art of story-telling? There is nothing that its pinions will not bear. INDEX ABERCROMBIE, Lascelles, 263. Addison, Joseph, 110, 113 _et seq._ _Ali Baba_, 89. _Amadis of Gaul_, 52, 97. _Anatomy of Melancholy, The_, 125. Apuleius, 125. _Arabian Nights, The_, 46, 100, 101, 231. _Arcadia_, The Duchess of Pembroke's, 78, 83 _et seq._, 196. _Arria Marcella_, 283. _Astrée, l'_, 85. _Atala_, 179 _et seq._ _Aucassin and Nicolete_, 11, 14, 15, 249, 305. BACON, Sir Francis, 112. Balzac, Honoré de, 188, 192, 206, 212, 217 _et seq._, 238, 288, 290, 292, 293, 301, 307. Barye, Antoine Louis, 180, 202. Baudelaire, Charles, 239. Beardsley Aubrey, 88. Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 70, 139. Beowulf, 9. _Bergers d'Arcadie, Les_, 87. Bible, The, 128. _Bickerstaff, Mr._, 19, 113 _et seq._ Boccaccio, Giovanni, 19, 20 _et seq._, 56, 82, 85, 125, 155, 225, 306, 309. Boigne, Mme. de, 275. Boileau, Nicolas B.-Despreaux, 62. Borrow, George, 59. Botticelli, 25. _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, 296, 297, 298. Brantôme, 278. Browne, Sir Thomas, 252. Bunyan, John, 126 _et seq._, 140, 155, 257. Burleigh, Lord, 74. Burney, Fanny, 107, 112, 115, 119, 147 _et seq._ Burns, Robert, 193. Burton, Robert, 125, 132, 134. Byron, Lord, 176, 202. _Caleb Williams_, 244, 245. _Canterbury Tales, The_, 37 _et seq._ _Captain Singleton_, 58.