When they are old enough to understand the meaning of words, children are sure to be interested up to a certain point by these saintly fables, but, taken as a whole, the songs of the South give us the impression that the coming of Christmas kindles the imagination of the Southern mother rather than that of the Southern child. On the north side of the Alps it is otherwise; there is scarcely need to say that in the Vaterland, Christmas is before all the children's feast. We, who have borrowed many of the German yule-tide customs, have left out the "Christkind;" and it is well that we have done so. Transplanted to foreign soil, that poetic piece of extra-belief would have become a mockery. As soon try to naturalise Kolyada, the Sclavonic white-robed New-year girl. The Christkind in His mythical attributes is nearer to Kolyada than to the Italian Bambinello. He belongs to the people, not to the Church. He is not swathed in jewelled swaddling clothes; His limbs are free, and He has wings that carry Him wheresoever good children abide. There is about Him all the dreamy charm of lands where twilight is long and shade and shine intermingle softly, and where the earth's wintry winding-sheet is more beautiful than her April bride gown. The most popular of German lullabies is a truly Teutonic mixture of piety, wonder-lore, and homeliness. Wagner has introduced the music to which it is sung into his "Siegfried-Idyl." I have to thank a Heidelberg friend for the text: Sleep, baby, sleep: Your father tends the sheep; Your mother shakes the branches small, Whence happy dreams in showers fall: Sleep, baby, sleep. Sleep, baby, sleep: The sky is full of sheep; The stars the lambs of heaven are, For whom the shepherd moon doth care: Sleep, baby, sleep. Sleep, baby, sleep: The Christ Child owns a sheep; He is Himself the Lamb of God; The world to save, to death He trod: Sleep, baby, sleep. Sleep, baby, sleep: I'll give you then a sheep With pretty bells, and you shall play And frolic with him all the day: Sleep, baby, sleep. Sleep, baby, sleep: And do not bleat like sheep, Or else the shepherd's dog will bite My naughty, little, crying spright: Sleep, baby, sleep. Sleep, baby, sleep: Begone, and watch the sheep, You naughty little dog! Begone, And do not wake my little one: Sleep, baby, sleep. In Denmark children are sung to sleep with a cradle hymn which is believed (so I am informed by a youthful correspondent) to be "very old." It has seven stanzas, of which the first runs, "Sleep sweetly, little child; lie quiet and still; as sweetly sleep as the bird in the wood, as the flowers in the meadow. God the Father has said, 'Angels stand on watch where mine, the little ones, are in bed.'" A correspondent at Warsaw (still more youthful) sends me the even-song of Polish children: