These Cro' Nest fairies are a dainty race. Owlet's eyes are their lanterns; they repose in cobweb hammocks swung on tufted spears of grass and rocked by midsummer night zephyrs; some lie on beds of lichen, with pillows of the breast-plumes of the humming-bird; others nestle in the purple shade of the four-o'clock, or in rock-niches lined with dazzling mica. Velvet-like mushrooms are their tables, where they quaff the dew from the buttercup. Their king's throne is of spicewood and sassafras, supported on tortoise-shell pillars and draped with crimson tulip-leaves. The "culprit" himself, however, in his beautiful outfit and quaint adventures, gives the best imagery of the poem. At the opening of his journey, chagrined and fatigued, he captures a spotted toad for a steed, and bridles her with silk-weed twist, spurring her onward with an osier whip. Arriving at the water's edge, he plunges in, but leeches, fish and other watery foes drive him back with bruised limbs. The use of cobweb lint and the balsam dews of sorrel and henbane relieve his wounds, and being refreshed by the juices of calamus, he embarks in a mussel-shell boat, painted brilliantly without and tinged with pearl within. He gathers a colen-bell for a cup, and sculls into the middle of the stream, laughing at the foes who chatter and grin in the water. There he sits in the moonlight, until a sturgeon, coming by, leaps glistening into the silvery light; and then, like a liliputian Mercury, balancing upon one foot, he lifts the flowery cup and catches the sparkling drop that washes the stain from his wing. He returns to the shore, having sweet nymphs grasping the sides of the boat with their tiny hands and urging it onward. The next enterprise of the "culprit" is more knightly. He is arrayed as a fairy cavalier, in acorn helmet, plumed with thistle-down, corselet made of a bee's nest, and cloak of butterfly wings. His shield is a lady-bug's shell; his lance a wasp-sting; his spurs of cockle-seed; his bow of vine-twig strung with corn-silk; and his arrows, nettle-shafts. He mounts a fire-fly steed, and waving a blade of blue grass, speeds upward to catch a flying meteor's spark. Again the spirits of evil are let loose, those of air being as bad as those of water. A sylphid queen tries to enchant him with her beauty and kindness; she toys with the butterfly cloak as he tells the dangers he has passed. But he never forgets the object of his pilgrimage, and triumphing over the foes of air, he is escorted with honor by the sylph's lovely retinue; his career is resumed, his flame-wood lamp rekindled, and before a streak of dawn is proclaimed in the eastern sky by the sentry elf, the "Culprit Fay" has made his full penance and been welcomed back to all his original glory. Drake died at the early age of twenty-five, a victim of consumption, and his grave is beside the little river Bronx in New York. To his memory his friend Halleck wrote the noted poem, thus beginning: