Sir Walter Scott, who appears to have wasted a good deal of time in trying to persuade himself that he put no faith in spirits, confesses quite humbly, in his old age, that “the tendency to belief in supernatural agencies seems connected with and deduced from the invaluable conviction of the certainty of a future state.” And beyond a doubt this tendency was throughout his life the source of many pleasurable emotions. So much so, in fact, that, according to Mr. Pater’s theory of happiness, the loss of these emotions, bred in him from childhood, would have been very inadequately repaid by a gain in scientific knowledge. If it be the true wisdom to direct our finest efforts towards multiplying our sensations, and so expanding the brief interval we call life, then the old unquestioning credulity was a more powerful motor in human happiness than any sentiment that fills its ground to-day. In the first place it was closely associated with certain types of beauty, and beauty is one of the tonics now most earnestly recommended to our sick souls. “Les fions d’aut fais” were charming to the very tips of their dewy, trembling wings; the elfin people, who danced in the forest glades under the white moonbeams, danced their way without any difficulty right into the hearts of men; the swan-maiden, who ventured shyly in the fisher’s path, was easily transformed into a loving wife; even the mara, most suspicious and terrible of ghostly visitors, has often laid aside her darker instincts, and developed into a cheerful spouse, with only a tinge of mystery to make her more attractive in her husband’s eyes. Melusina combing her golden hair by the bubbling fountain of Lusignan, Undine playing in the rain-drenched forest, the nixie dancing at the village feast with her handsome Flemish lad, and the mermaid reluctantly leaving her watery home to wed the youth who captured her magic seal-skin, all belong to the sisterhood of beauty, and their images did good service in raising the vulgar mind from its enforced contemplation of the sordid troubles, the droning vexations, of life.