They are my favourites; to them I send my prettiest pictures by your brothers, the Dreams: yes, I have often floated down to them myself, and kissed and fondled and played romps with them.'

'Oh, the dear children!' cried Fairy-tale, with a new hope. 'Yes, so it shall be. I will make another trial with them.

'Do so, darling child,' said the queen. 'Go to them. Be sure you please the little ones, and then the old ones won't send you away.'-Hauff.

159. ONE'S OWN CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS PRETTIEST.

A sportsman went out once into a wood to shoot, and he met a snipe.

'Dear friend,' said the snipe, 'don't shoot my children!' 'How shall I know your children?' asked the sportsman : 'what are they like?'

'Oh!' said the snipe, 'mine are the prettiest children in all the wood.'

'Very well,' said the sportsman, I'll not shoot them; don't be afraid.'

But for all that when he came back there, he had a whole string of young snipes in his hand, which he had shot.

'Oh, oh!' said the snipe, 'why did you shoot my children after all?'

'What! these your children!' said the sportsman; 'why, I shot the ugliest I could find; that I did!'

"Woe is me!' said the snipe; 'don't you know that everybody thinks his own children the prettiest?'

Popular Tales from the Norse.

PART IV,

160. SAGACITY OF DOG AND CAT.

The Newfoundland dog is known to be superior to most others in the power of swimming, for which it is peculiarly fitted by having the foot partly webbed. Some years ago a nurse was playing with a child on the parapet of a bridge at Dublin; with a sudden spring the child fell into the river. The spectators saw the waters close over the child, and imagined that it had sunk to rise no more, when a noble dog, seeing the catastrophe, gazed wistfully at the ripple in the stream made by the child's descent, and rushed in to its rescue. At the same instant the poor little thing reappeared on the surface: the dog seized it, and with a firm but gentle pressure bore it to the shore without injury. Among the spectators attracted to the spot was a gentleman who appeared strongly impressed with admiration for the sagacity and promptness of the dog. On hastening to get nearer to him, he saw, with terror, joy, and surprise, that the child thus rescued was his own!

The sagacity of the feline race is clearly evinced in the following anecdote:- 'Mr. Tiedeman, the famous Saxon dentist, had a valuable tortoise-shell cat, that for days did nothing but moan. Guessing the cause, he looked into its mouth, and seeing a decayed tooth, soon relieved it of its pain. The following day there were at least ten cats at his door-the day after, twenty; and they went on increasing at such a rate that he was obliged to keep a bulldog to drive them away. But nothing would help. A cat who had the toothache would come any number of miles to him. However, being one morning very nervous, he accidentally broke the jaw of an old tabby. The news of this spread like wildfire. Not a single cat ever came to him afterwards.'

161. A REASONABLE' MONKEY.

Dr. Guthrie relates the following amusing anecdote of a reasonable monkey:

'Jack, as he was called, seeing his master and some companions drinking, with those imitative powers for which his species is remarkable, finding half a glass of whisky left, took it up and drank it off. It flew, of course, to his head. Amid their loud roars of laughter, he began to skip, hop, and dance. Jack was drunk. Next day, when they went, with the intention of repeating the fun, to take the poor monkey from his box, he was not to be seen. Looking inside, there he lay, crouching in a corner. 'Come out!' said his master. Afraid to disobey, he came, walking on three legs-the fore-paw that was laid on his forehead saying, as plain as words could do, that he had a headache.

'Having left him some days to get well and resume his gaiety, they at length carried him off to the old scene of revel On entering he eyed the glasses with manifest terror, skulking behind the chair; and on his master ordering him to drink he bolted, and he was on the house-top in a twinkling. They called him down. He would not come. His master shook the whip at him. Jack grinned defiance. A gun, of which he was always much afraid, was pointed at this disciple of temperance; he ducked his head, and slipped over to the back of the house; upon which, seeing his predicament, and less afraid, apparently, of the fire than the fire-water, the monkey leaped at a bound on the chimney-top, and getting down into a flue, held on by his fore-paws. He would rather be singed than drunk. He triumphed ; and, although his master kept him for twelve years after that, he never could persuade the monkey to taste another drop of whisky.'

162. MAHOMET.

Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, four years after the death of Justinian, and two months after the defeat of the Abyssinians, whose victory would have introduced into the Caaba the religion of the Christians. In his early infancy he was deprived of his father, his mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and in the division of the inheritance the orbhan's share was reduced to five camels and an Ethiopian maid-servant. Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide and guardian of his youth.

Mahomet, in his twenty-fifth year, entered into the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage contract describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. By this alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of his ancestors; and the judicious Cadijah was content with his domestic virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, he assumed the title of a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.

According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet was distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift that is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of his soul, and his gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca : the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views. His memory was capacious and retentive; his imagination sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action ; and, although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia. With these powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian; his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our mind the minds of

sages and heroes. From his earliest youth Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and in the cave

of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the Prophet. The faith, which under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction, THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, AND THAT MAHOMET IS THE APOSTLE OF Gon -Gibbon. 1737-1794.

163. THE VULTURE AND HIS CHILDREN.

'My children,' said an old vulture to his young ones, 'you will the less want my instructions, because you have had my practice before your eyes. You have seen me snatch from the farm the household fowls, you have seen me seize the leveret in the bush, and the kid in the pasture; you know how to fix your talons, and how to take your flight when you are laden with your prey. But you remember the taste of more delicious food. I have often regaled you with the flesh of man.' 'Tell us,' said the young vultures, 'where man may be found, and how he may be known; his flesh is surely the natural food of the vulture. Why have you never brought a man in your talons to the nest ?' 'He is too bulky,' said the vulture; 'when we find a man we can only tear away his flesh, and leave his bones upon the ground.' 'Since man is so big,' said the young ones, 'how do you kill him? You are afraid of the wolf and of the bear; by what power are vultures superior to man? Is man more defenceless than a sheep?' 'We have not the strength of man,' returned the vulture, and I am sometimes in doubt whether we have his subtlety; and the vultures would seldom feast upon his flesh, had not nature that devoted him to our uses infused into him a strange ferocity, which I have never observed in any other being that feeds upon the earth. Two herds of men will often meet and shake the earth with noise, and fill the air with fire. When you hear noise, and see fire, with flashes along the ground, hasten to the place with your swiftest wing, for men are surely destroying one another; you will then find the ground smoking with blood, and covered with carcasses, of which many are dismembered and mangled for the convenience of the vulture.' 'But when men have killed their prey,' said the pupil, 'why do they not eat it? When the wolf has killed a sheep, he suffers not the vulture to touch it till he has satisfied himself. Is not