"That it is you--you who were the friend of my youth: is not that mournful enough? Oh, come back with me to our dear, dear earth, where we shall know each other once more under illusive forms--where there exists the superstition of friendship! What am I doing here?" "What will that avail?" answered the stranger. "You will want to be back again; earth is not bright enough for you: the flowers are too small for you, the song too suppressed. Colour there, cannot emerge so brilliantly from the shade; flowers there are of small comfort, and so prone to fade; the little birds think of their death, and sing in modest constraint: but here every thing is on a scale of grandeur." "Oh, I will be contented!" cried Lewis, as the tears gushed profusely from his eyes. "Do but come back with me, and be my friend once more; let us leave this desert, this glittering misery!" Thus saying, he opened his eyes, for some one was shaking him roughly. Over him leant the friendly but pale face of his once sick friend. "But are you dead?" cried Lewis. "Recovered am I, wicked sleeper," he replied. "Is it thus you visit your sick friend? Come along with me; my carriage is waiting there, and a thunder-storm is rising." Lewis rose: in his sleep he had glided off the trunk of the tree; his friend's letter lay open beside him. "So am I really on the earth again?" he exclaimed with joy; "really? and is this no new dream?" "You will not escape from earth," answered his friend with a smile; and both were locked in heart-felt embraces. "How happy I am," said Lewis, "that I have you once more, that I feel as I used to do, and that you are well again!" "Suddenly," replied his friend, "I felt ill; and as suddenly I was well again. So I wished to go to you, and do away with the alarm that my letter must have caused you; and here, half-way, I find you asleep." "I do not deserve your love at all," said Lewis. "Why?" "Because I just now doubted of your friendship." "But only in sleep." "It would be strange enough though," said Lewis, "if there really were such things as fairies." "There are such, of a certainty," replied the other; "but it is all a fable, that their whole pleasure is to make men happy. They plant those wishes in our bosoms which we ourselves do not know of; those over-wrought pretensions--that super-human covetousness of super-human gifts; so that in our desponding delirium we afterwards despise the beautiful earth with all its glorious stores." Lewis answered with a pressure of the hand. THE ELVES. "Where is Maria, our child?" asked the father. "She is playing on the green," replied the mother, "with our neighbour's son." "Do not let them run away," said the father anxiously; "they are so thoughtless." The mother attended to the wants of the little ones, and gave them their supper. "The weather is hot, mother," said the boy; and the little maiden longed exceedingly to have some red cherries.