The giant keeps the garden to himself and the children that played in it are banished, and thenceforward its glories are gone. In the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. The Snow covered up the grass with his great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver, but anon there came a child who wept as he wandered in the desolated garden, and the Selfish Giant's heart melted; once again the children's voices are heard and the garden flourishes as it did before, and the Giant grows old and watches from his chair the children at their play. "I have many beautiful flowers," he said, "but the children are the most beautiful flowers of it all," till at last the grey old Giant finds again in his garden the child who had first touched his hard heart--"but when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' for on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet. 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant, 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.' 'Nay,' answered the child, 'but these are the wounds of love.'" "The Devoted Friend" is altogether in another vein. As the first story is fragrant of the East and the second mediæval in its memories, so the third is Teutonic, and "Hans and the Miller's Friendship" reminds us of the Brothers Grimm. Now that every child has the chance of reading the German fairy stories, Oscar Wilde's tale will be compared with theirs, but I think the children will like this one best for the simple reason that, being written in exquisite English, nothing that has passed through the perils of translation can have its charm. Children are wonderful, because perfectly unconscious, critics of style.