The dark elves of Saxon days have well-nigh vanished with the bogs and marshes and the death-like vapours which gave them birth. With the passing of centuries the lesser elves have become tiny of stature and friendly to man, warming themselves by our firesides and disporting themselves in our gardens. Perhaps now they even look to us for protection, lest in this age of materialism they be driven altogether from the face of the earth. As early as the twelfth century we find mention of creatures akin to the brownies, whom we all love; for the serious Gervase of Tilbury tells us of these goblins, less than half an inch high, having faces wrinkled with age, and dressed in patched garments. These little creatures, he assures us, come and work at night in the houses of mankind; but they had not lost their impish ways and elvish tricks, "for at times when Englishmen ride abroad in the darkness of night, an unseen Portunos [Brownie?] will join company with the wayfarer; and after riding awhile by his side will at length seize his reins and lead his horse into the slough wherein he will stick and wallow while the Portunos departs with mocking laughter, thus making sport of man's simplicity." Perhaps they still make sport of our simplicity, but we shall be the losers if they vanish altogether from the earth. If in impish mood they lead the wayfarer into sloughs, do not the sheen-bright elves lighten some of the darkest paths of pain which human beings are forced to tread? Are not these Ariel-like creatures links between the flowers of earth which they haunt and the stars of heaven whence they seem to derive their radiance? The fairies have almost deserted us, but perhaps they will one day come back to our gardens and teach us that there is something true, though beyond what we can know, in the old astrological lore of the close secret communion between stars and flowers. Do not flowers seem to reflect in microscopic form those glorious flowers which deck the firmament of heaven? In many flowers there is something so star-like that almost unconsciously our minds connect them with the luminaries in the great expanse above us, and from this it seems but a short step to the belief that there is between them a secret communion which is past our understanding. "This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, The all-compensating wonder, Giving to common things wild kindred With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove; Linking such heights and such humilities, Hand in hand in ordinal dances, That I do think my tread, Stirring the blossoms in the meadow-grass Flickers the unwithering stars."[134]