CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
PIXY-LED.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
THE EFFECTS OF LIGHT ON PLANTS.
A SCARE IN CONNEMARA.
AN ASCENT OF ARARAT.
LEGAL GLEANINGS.
ANOTHER PARTRIDGE AND HER CHICKS.
TREASURE-TROVE.
No. 754.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1878.
PIXY-LED.
In the deep green lanes of leafy Devonshire, andover its broad heaths and moors, there are (aswe had occasion to shew in a recent sketch) stillpixies to be found by those who believe in them;as there are yet ‘the little folk’—‘the goodpeople’—in the remotest parts of Scotland, leprechaunsin Ireland, and les dames blanches in France.And still, as in olden time, poor dazed mortals arepixy-led;—fascinated, like the victims of the Sirensof old, by the songs which to others are but as thesighing of the wind among the reeds, but which tothem are divinest music, full of lovely promisesand of fairest visions. To them that handful ofwithered leaves is a mass of shining gold; andRübezahl, now a gnome of the mines and nowa charcoal-burner of the mountains, is followedwithout question or suspicion when he poses forApollo or offers himself as Alexander. The oldold times, when fairy Melusines were women byday and snakes by night—when demon loversabounded, and men and maidens lost their soulsfor eyes too bright to be true—are still repeated inthe circumstances of to-day; and to one under thespell of the pixies, old age is youth, ugliness isbeauty, and sordid meanness is magnanimity andgoodness. The subtle enchantment of glamour isthrown over every part of life; and, like gardensseen in dreams, where the flowers of spring andthe fruits of autumn grow side by side on thesame branch, those touched with elfin fingers seethings which never existed and as they neverexisted; enriching with the wealth of their ownfancy natures left dowerless by genius, by beauty,by grace; exalting mediocrity into the high placeof excellence—like the godhead once worshippedin a bull and reverenced in a hawk.
A man lies at the feet of a vitalised machine,a living doll—a talking marionette—whom heidealises as the crowned grace of womanhood,just as Titania before him idealised the ass’s headof her Gentle Joy. He sees nothing in its truelight, but, pixy-led, hears only the sweet poemof his own love, knows only the magic beautyof his own creation. Where others gauge thevulgar selfishness of a commonplace schemer whoha