Of course it was not really so, literature had but lately come to a great middle class who had not learned to be easy; and as worthy folk who talked colloquially wrote in stilted parody of Dr. Johnson's stately periods, so the uncouth address in print to the populace of the nursery was doubtless forgotten in daily intercourse. But the conventions were preserved, and honest fun or full-bodied romance that loves to depict gnomes and hob-goblins, giants and dwarfs in a world of adventure and mystery, was unpopular. Children's books were illustrated entirely by the wonders of the creation, or the still greater wonders of so-called polite society. Never in them, except introduced purposely as an "awful example," do you meet an untidy, careless, normal child. Even the beggars are prim, and the beasts and birds distinctly genteel in their habits. Fairyland was shut to the little ones, who were turned out of their own domain. It seems quite likely that this continued until the German _märchen_ (the literary products of Germany were much in favour at this period) reopened the wonderland of the other world about the time that Charles Dickens helped to throw the door still wider. Discovering that the child possessed the right to be amused, the imagination of poets and artists addressed itself at last to the most appreciative of all audiences, a world of newcomers, with insatiable appetites for wonders real and imaginary. [Illustration: ILLUSTRATION (REDUCED) FROM "MISUNDERSTOOD" BY GEORGE DU MAURIER (RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON. 1874)] But for many years before the Victorian period folklore was left to the peasants, or at least kept out of reach of children of the higher classes. No doubt old nurses prattled it to their charges, perhaps weak-minded mothers occasionally repeated the ancient legends, but the printing-press set its face against fancy, and offered facts in its stead. In the list of sixty-two books before mentioned, if we except a few nursery jingles such as "Mother Hubbard" and "Cock Robin," we find but two real fairy stories, "Cinderella," "Puss-in-Boots," and three old-world narratives of adventure, "Whittington and His Cat," "The Seven Champions of Christendom," and "Valentine and Orson." The rest are "Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation," "The Monthly Monitor," "Tommy Trip's Museum of Beasts," "The Perambulations of a Mouse," and so on, with a few things like "The House that Jack Built," and "A, Apple Pie," that are but daily facts put into story shape. Now it is clear that the artists inspired by fifty of these had no chance of displaying their imagination, and every opportunity of pointing a moral; and it is painful to be obliged to own that they succeeded beyond belief in their efforts to be dull. Of like sort are "A Visit to the Bazaar" (Harris, 1814), and "The Dandies' Ball" (1820). [Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN." (STRAHAN. 1871. NOW PUBLISHED BY BLACKIE AND SON)]