This is obviously the story of the apostacy and redemption of the human family, in the form of a fairy legend. It conforms closely to the necessary incidents of such a catastrophe, and answers well and truly to the intuitive prophecy of man’s final recovery. In substance and method the correspondence is obvious. Every notion of “the fall,” whether revealed or fictitious, assumes the agency of “the wicked one;” and the final recovery, universally expected, involves the sympathies and employs the services of the “ministering spirits,” as important instruments in the happy consummation. This tale was presented as a dramatic spectacle last winter at the Boston Museum. The play is a minutely faithful expositor of the legend; and it is by the aid of this fine scenic exhibition that I am able to adjust the details, of which the primitive story is so legitimately capable, to the answering points in the great epic of human history “as it is most surely believed among us.” The parallel presented does not seem to me fanciful, but the circumstantial exactness of resemblance may, I think, be accounted for without supposing a designed imitation. Before tracing the specialties and their allusions, let us notice the general parallelism found between the pivotal points of the fabulous and authentic representations. The Bible Eden is introduced at the same stage of the story’s action and in the same attitude to the principal characters of the narrative; it stands on the coronation day of its monarch, perfect in all its appointments; the realms of air, earth and ocean in auspicious relation, every element harmoniously obedient, and the garden still glows with the smile which accompanied the approving declaration, “it is very good.” Dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth, is conferred, and the heavens add their felicities to the inaugural rejoicings—“the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The gifts are without measure or stint, and the Divine beneficence cannot be tainted in its source nor impeded in its efflux, but the intended recipients, by “the wiles of the enemy,” are rendered incapable of the enjoyment. The sin-blunted sense and passion blinded soul of the fallen race, are plunged into a spiritual stupor, which sleep—the sister and semblance of death—strikingly illustrates; and through the long age of moral incapacity which follows, the highest mode of life is but dimly recognized and feebly felt in the dreams of a paradise lost and the visions of a millenium to come; till, “in the fullness of time,” when a complete psychical age shall be past. The Deliverer, having first overcome the wicked one, shall lead captivity captive, and by the “marriage of the Lamb” with “the bride which is the Church,” perfect the redemption and bring in the new heavens and new earth.