But you think that these attractions, existing at times for the adult, could not exist for the child. Understand that you are wrong. Understand that these attractions _do_ exist for the child; and perhaps as much more strongly than they _can_ exist for the adult, by the whole difference between the concentration of a childish love, and the inevitable distraction upon multiplied objects of any love that can affect an adult. There is a German superstition (well-known by a popular translation) of the Erl-king's Daughter, who fixes her love upon some child, and seeks to wile him away into her own shadowy kingdom in forests. "Who is it that rides through the forest so fast?" It is a knight, who carries his child before him on the saddle. The Erl-king's Daughter rides on his right hand, and still whispers temptations to the infant audible only to _him_. "If thou wilt, dear baby, with me go away, We will see a fine show, we will play a fine play." The consent of the baby is essential to her success. And finally she _does_ succeed. Other charms, other temptations, would have been requisite for me. My intellect was too advanced for those fascinations. But could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to me, and promised to lead me where my sister was, she might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest forests upon earth. Languishing was my condition at that time. Still I languished for things "which" (a voice from heaven seemed to answer through my own heart) "_can_not be granted;" and which, when again I languished, again the voice repeated, "_cannot_ be granted." * * * * * Well it was for me that, at this crisis, I was summoned to put on the harness of life, by commencing my classical studies under one of my guardians, a clergyman of the English Church, and (so far as regarded Latin) a most accomplished scholar.