While treating of the superstitions and legends belonging to trees, it has been impossible to avoid touching upon the belief in ghosts. That faith exists in every part of the world. The fetichists of the African priests, the totemists of North America, the wildest savages of the South Seas with their uncouth idols, the aborigines of Australia and New Zealand—all stand in terror of ghosts. I long years ago translated a collection of Pekingese stories of haunted houses; but in many moves and journeys the manuscript has been lost—no great matter of regret, for these tales are always the same, the two leading causes for apparitions being remorse or revenge. The story of the ghost of Sakura Sōgorō, perhaps the most famous ghost story of the Far East, which I have translated in my “Tales of Old Japan,” has, apart from its local colouring, no feature differing from many such traditions which have been handed down in Europe. But the true interest of these superstitions, call them fables, myths—what you will—lies in the proof that all over the world there is implanted in man the instinctive conviction that death is not the end of all things—the mere return of dust to dust, of ashes to ashes; if that were so, there could be no thought of ghosts. The belief depends upon the existence of that mysterious intuitive feeling that when the thread of fate has been severed, there still remains another life which death itself cannot kill, and that other life is the soul. * * * * * But the fairies—where are they? Can it be that the Bakémono-zakura—the haunted cherry trees of Japan—when they were ruthlessly torn out of the soil of the country of the gods ten years ago, indignantly burst their barken bonds, and taking wing for refuge to the sacred groves of Mount Fugi, from some wild bird’s eyrie watched their beloved old homes being wafted away to new and uncertain climes across the terrors of the Pacific Ocean? And yet often, even here, I see a merry band of flaxen-haired dwarfs playing about the enchanted trees. Fairy-land is rich in surprises and mystifications. Who knows? Perhaps these little sprites are themselves fairies who have chosen for their abode the forsaken dwellings of the dark eastern Bakémono—“good folk” sent by a kindly Providence to shed a fleeting ray of the sunshine of poetry over the wintry prose of an octogenarian’s life. QUEEN VICTORIA AND MARIE THERESIA