I do not think it fanciful to suppose that, had this very practical Englishman found time to read at large in the _Cabinet des Fées_, he would have discovered therein much to corroborate the evidence steadily and unconsciously borne by his own journals--that the urbanity of life among the French upper classes was genuine, reflecting a real and (for a whole society) a remarkable sunniness of disposition. Unconscious of their doom, the little victims played. But they did play; and they fell victims, not to their own passions, but to a form of government economically rotten. Of all the volumes in the _Cabinet_, possibly the most famous are the first and second, containing the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy, and vols. 7-11, containing M. Galland's version (so much better than any translation) of _The Arabian Nights_. I hope that one of those days Mr. Dulac will lay the public under debt by illustrating all these, and the stories of Antony Hamilton to boot. Meanwhile, here are three of the most famous tales from Perrault's wallet, and one, the evergreen _Beauty and the Beast_, by an almost forgotten authoress, Madame de Villeneuve. The ghost of Charles Perrault, could it walk to-day--_perruque_ and all--might well sigh over the vanity of human pretensions. For Monsieur Perrault was a person of importance in his lifetime (1628-1703), and a big-wig in every sense of the term. Colbert made him Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, and anon Controller of Public Works--in which capacity he suggested to his architect-brother, Claude Perrault, the facade of the Louvre with its renowned colonnade. He flattered his monarch with a poem _Le Siècle de Louis le Grand_. 'Je ne sais,' observes a circle, 'si ce roi, malgré son amour excessif pour la flatterie, fut content: les bornes étaient outre-passées.' The poem, as a poem, had little success; but by positing that the Age of Louis was the greatest in history, and suggesting that the moderns were as good as the ancients or better, it started a famous controversy. Boileau, Racine, La Bruyère, honoured him by taking the other side, and forced him to develop his paradox in a book of dialogues, _Parallèles des Anciens et des Modernes_. But his best answer was his urbane remark (for he kept his temper admirably) that these gentlemen did ill to dispute the superiority of the moderns while their own works gave proof of it. He wrote other poems, other tractates (including one on the 'Illustrious Men of his Age'), besides occasional tracts on matters of high politics: and his memory is kept alive by one small packet of fairy-tales--stories which he heard the nurse telling his little boy, and set down upon paper for a recreation! That is the way with literary fame. To take an English example: it is odds that Southey, poet-laureate and politician of great self-importance in his day, will come finally to be remembered by his baby-story of _The Three Bears_.