But how soft the refrain from this deep bass of nature! Pale, dreamy tufts of male and lady fern, delicately luminous in the forest-depths, Canterbury bells — for English pilgrims, what fitter accompaniment?—vibrating to the zephyrs in the orbs of sunlight; brighter still, the ruby coronals of sweet-williams; and, where it should be, among its native mountains, luxuriant gentian, drooping like Solomon’s seal, weighed down as with elfin vases of lapis lazuli. This is the flower of Illyria, which, as Pliny tells us, took its name from her last king—that Gentius who ruled these lands in the days of Perseus of Macedon, and who first brought into credit the virtues of the herb which now alone preserves his memory. Now and then we emerge on a glade of breathing bracken—from the leafy orchestra round, the myriad chirp of tree-crickets, caught up below by blue and red winged brothers, who, in their glee, half skipping and half flying, seem amphibious of earth and heaven—a ‘kingly’ minstrelsy, as beseeming the rank and beauty of the butterfly dancers. Amongst the company we noticed a purple Emperor, Dukes of Burgundy, majestic swallow-tails, a cream-spotted tiger-moth—beauties of Camberwell—not to speak of blues and lesser stars—marsh fritillaries and delicate wood-whites, hovering over damper hollows; and in one dark watery dell ‘edged with poplar pale,’ a black and mysterious butterfly, which I am content to leave within the limits of the Unknown. It is not for me to enquire into the transformation of such sooty insects—_nec scire fas est!_—for we are now treading enchanted ground—we are actually on the skirts of earthly fairyland. Yonder dark forest mountain, unfathomable as it seems, is called by a name which the Bosniac woodman still mentions with awe. It is nothing else than the Vila Gora—the fairy mountain. Yes! even within the limits of Europe the nymphs of the old world have something more than twilight thickets for their mourning; here at least they have still some sunny glades and laughing runnels left them for their merry-go-rounds. We are now in a land where the fairies live not only in the lays but the minds of men—and malicious sprites some of them are, sable as that mysterious fly! As the peasant gropes his way through yonder haunted pine-wood, the trees begin to drip with grisly lichen, the trunks grow scarred, and sooty with storm and lightning, and a cloudy pall obscures the sun, and a sudden gust of wind rattles the bony limbs above—and lo! across the gloomiest forest-crypt, lashing her coal-black stag with serpent scourge, shoots—_the Evil Vila_!