Here, strange to say, is the note of pathos which we hear again and again in the volume of fairy stories which many men look upon as Oscar Wilde's best and most characteristic prose work. Time after time they make me murmur Vergil's untranslatable line _sunt lachrymæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt_. The felicity of expression is exquisite, and an opulent imagination lavishes its treasures in every story. Our author has come into full possession of his sovereignty of words and every sentence has its carefully considered, yet spontaneous charm. Nevertheless, Oscar Wilde makes the Linnet his mouthpiece in the fourth story "The Devoted Friend." "'The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.' 'Ah, that is always a very dangerous thing to do,' said the Duck--and I quite agreed with her." Dangerous though it is, Oscar Wilde essayed the endeavour. I do not think that children would easily detect that _amari aliquid_ which makes the fairy stories fascinating to minds that are mature, and I am sure that many little ones have revelled in the Swallow's stories of what he had seen in strange lands when he told "the Happy Prince of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile and catch gold fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies." I suppose it would shock the authorities of the Education Department at Whitehall if it were suggested that the children in the Elementary Day Schools should have for their reading lesson, sometimes, the volume of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales, by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood"--but I think the starved and stunted imaginations of the children in the great, cruel cities would revive and grow if this could be done. But perhaps it would have to be an expurgated edition. The sad consciousness of, and stern satire on, our social system might remain, the children would take no hurt, and the weary school teachers would be glad to hear and to read a children's fairy tale, which sets the student thinking and makes the more worldly man consider his ways. But if I had the editing of the book I would leave out here and there a sentence. "'Bring me the two most precious things in the city,' said God to one of His angels; and the angel brought him the leaden heart and the dead bird.