The race of Peris of Persia, and Fairies of western Europe, hold a very near and familiar relation to the every day life of humanity, by their large intermixture of human characteristics and the close resemblance and alliance of their probationary existence and ultimate destiny to the life and fortunes of men. A commonplace connection with ordinary affairs and household interests constitutes the largest part of the popular notion of them; and their interferences among the vulgar are almost absurd and ludicrous enough to impeach the earnestness of the superstition; but our best poets have shown them capable of very noble and beneficent functions in heroic story. Like our own various nature, they are a marvellous mixture of the mighty and the mean, the magnanimous, the malignant and the mirthful; they stand, in a word, as our own correspondents in a subtler sphere, and serve to illustrate, by exaggerating, all that is true and possible in us, but more probable of them—our own shadows lengthened, and our own light brightened into a higher life. In some countries the legends are obscure, in others clear; but they all agree well enough in ascribing their origin to the intermarriage of angels with “the daughters of men,” and that they are put under penance and probation for the recovery of their paradise. So, like our own race, they have fallen from a higher estate; their natures are half human, and their general fortunes are freighted on the same tide. The nursery tale of the Sleeping Beauty will serve capitally to illustrate our theme. Handed down from age to age, and passed from nation to nation, through the agency of oral tradition chiefly, it has of course taken as many shapes as the popular fancy could impart to it; but the essential points, seen through all the existing forms, are substantially these: