"Are the stories you are going to read to us of this kind?" asked Clara. "Perhaps," replied Ernest. "And not allegorical?" "As you please to call them. There is not, and there cannot be any creation of art which has not some kind of allegory at the bottom of it, however little it may let itself be seen. The two forms of good and evil appear in every poem; they meet us at every turn, in every thing man produces, as the one eternal riddle in an endless multiplicity of forms, which he is for ever struggling to resolve. As there are particular aspects in which the most every-day life appears like a myth, so it is possible to feel oneself in as close connexion with, as much at home in the middle of the wildest wonders as the ordinary incidents of life. One may go so far as to say, that the commonest, simplest, pleasantest things, as well as the most marvellous, can only be said to be true, can only exert an influence on our minds, in so far as they contain some allegory as their groundwork, as the link which connects them with the system of the universe. This is why Dante's allegories come so home to us, because they pierce through and through to the very heart and centre of reality. Novalis says, there is no real history, except what might be fable. Of course, there are many weak and sickly poems of this kind, which merely drag wearily on to the moral, without taking the imagination along with them; and these of all the different sorts of instruction or entertainment are the most tiresome. But it is time to proceed to our tales." * * * * * And here we would gladly leave this matter, and let the tales tell their own story. What their idea is as a whole, they speak plainly enough; and it would be to destroy their effect, as well as to misunderstand the whole theory of this kind of fiction, to translate them into a series of moral reflections, and append a didactic sentiment to them as to one of Æsop's fables. And yet English readers will not be content with a suggestion of allegory; they will be asking for meanings, and requiring to have the whole matter laid out before them in fair, plain characters of black and white; so that notwithstanding my full consciousness of the general undesirableness and the unphilosophical nature of such a proceeding, I will offer a few general remarks, in the way of elucidation, for three or four of these stories, which shall put people on the scent to find the real meaning, not only of these stories in particular, but in general of any such as may be brought before them. Consoling myself, therefore, with the reflection that a preface is always read, as it is written, the last thing in a book, and that in that case my explanation can hurt no one, and may be of some profit to those who have failed to see any thing for themselves, I proceed.