I do not believe that fear of the dark is universal among young children. I know a child that did not show any trace of it till some rather too gruesome stories of Grimm set his brain horror-spinning when he ought to have been going to sleep. A lady whom I know tells me that she never had the fear as a child though she acquired it later, towards the age of thirty. How common it is among children under ten or twelve, we have as yet no means of judging. Some inquiries of Dr. Stanley Hall show that out of about 300 young people under thirty only two appear to have been wholly exempt from it, but the ages at which the fear first appeared are not given. Here, again, we have a counterbalancing side. An imaginative child can fill the dark vacancy of the bedroom with bright pleasing images. On going to bed and saying good-night to the world of daylight, he can see his beloved fairies, talk to them and hear them talk. We know how R. L. Stevenson must, when a child, have gladdened many of his solitary dark hours by bright fancies. Even when there is a little trepidation a hardy child may manage to play with his fears, and so in a sense to enjoy his black phantasmagoria, just as grown-ups may enjoy the horrors of fiction. It will perhaps turn out that imaginative children have both suffered and enjoyed the most in these ways, the effect varying with nervous tone and mental condition. Yet it seems probable that the fearful suffering mood has here been uppermost. Why these nocturnal images tend to be gloomy and alarming may, I think, be explained by a number of circumstances. The absence of light and the oncoming of night have, as we know, a lowering effect on the functions of the body; and it is not unlikely that this might so modify the action of the brain as to favour the rise of gloomy thoughts. The very blackness of night, too, which we must remember is actually seen by the child, would probably tend to darken the young thoughts. We know how commonly we make black and dark shades of colour symbols of melancholy and sorrow. If to this we add that in the night a child is apt to feel lost through a loss of all his customary landmarks, and that, worst of all, he is, in the midst of this blackness which blots out his daily home, left to himself, robbed of that human companionship which is his necessary stay and comfort, we need not, I think, wonder at his so often encountering "the terror by night". (_b_) _Damage of the Onslaught._ I have now, perhaps, illustrated sufficiently some of the more common and characteristic fears of children. The facts seem to show that they are exposed on different sides to the attacks of fear, and that the attacking force is large and consists of a variety of alarming shapes.