Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up his
goods behind strong shutters, so that no one might see them after
closing hours. Now he leaves everything open to the eye and turns
the gas on. So the fairies, who used to lock up their sleeping
beauties in impenetrable thickets, now leave them in the most public
places they can find, as knowing that they will there most certainly
escape notice. Look at De Hooghe; look at The Pilgrim's Progress,
or even Shakespeare himself--how long they slept unawakened, though
they were in broad daylight and on the public thoroughfares all the
time. Look at Tabachetti, and the masterpieces he left at Varallo.
His figures there are exposed to the gaze of every passer-by; yet
who heeds them? Who, save a very few, even know of their existence?
Look again at Gaudenzio Ferrari, or the "Danse des Paysans," by
Holbein, to which I ventured to call attention in the Universal
Review. No, no; if a thing be in Central Africa, it is the glory of
this age to find it out; so the fairies think it safer to conceal
their proteges under a show of openness; for the schoolmaster is
much abroad, and there is no hedge so thick or so thorny as the
dulness of culture.
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