The knight personates the highest ideal of philanthropy; the squire stands for the lower, more palpable modes of practical benevolence and reform. They are distinguished as widely as general and special providence, as the thorough emancipation of the soul and the charity which relieves the body, or the whole difference between the apostleship of spiritual and that of civil liberty. They correspond respectively to the Prophet Elisha, who saw the mountain tops filled with horses and chariots of fire, outnumbering and overwhelming the hosts of the Syrian king; and his servant, who saw but two men, his master and himself, opposed to a numerous and well appointed army. Such is the difference between the seer and the servant in any labor or conflict of faith—in any enterprise which involves the spiritual forces that rule the movements of the world. Throughout the whole action of the drama the agency and deportment of the knight and his follower are marked by this distinction. But the scene shifts, and the sympathetic and corroborative movements in Fairy-land, are revealed. The Fairy of the Oak appears and summons the spirits of the Air, Earth, Water and Fire. The elements, disordered by the fall, and thenceforth at war with the poor fugitive from Paradise, must render their aid in his restoration, that when the last enemy is put under his feet the material creation, cursed for his sin, may be renewed with his recovery, and the harmonies of matter answer to the sanctities of spirit. The spirits of the material forces obey the invocation, and cordially promise sympathy and service: “Throughout all space—above, below, In earth or air, through fire or snow, Where’er our mission calls we fly, Our tasks performing merrily, Our guerdon winning happily.” The actors, human and ethereal, thus adjusted to their several offices, the knight and his squire enter the haunted wood—the squire to struggle with the grosser forms of evil, some as ludicrous as sad, others as horrible as atrocious, and all odious, coarse and palpable; the knight to be tempted of the devil, and do battle with him for the redemption of the enchanted family from his dominion.