INTRODUCTION SUPPLEMENTARY.

I have been young and now I am old.

THEY tell me, moreover, that I am also getting garrulous, and particularly fond of teaching by fable— which, by the bye, I always was; therefore, that is no strange thing. It is to this instinct of my nature, indeed, that I trace that fondness for Boccaccio and the Italian novellists for which I am become remarkable. But they say further that the habit grows with me, and that whenever I undertake to discuss a subject, the fable is ever certain to come before, and the application to follow after. This is surely in the order of nature; and as it seems to be understood for my humour, I may solicit indulgence on the score of age, and be permitted the same on this occasion.

One is not always compelled to be original in a fable, any more than in a story-(some of Boccaccio's are borrowed, and all the tales in this little volume are confessedly borrowed from him);-nor is one properly compellable to acknowledge whether the fable one tells is at first or second hand-enough that it is told, that you know not whence it is derived, and that it is applicable to the purpose. A fable etymologically is only "a word spoken," and a word spoken in season is good, and such a fable is the best of all spoken words.

Once

upon a time the Fowls of Heaven took it into their wise heads to plant a Grove of Oaks, which the Druids might worship in, and thus make sacred. Property had not yet put up her pales, but when the oaks had grown to their full majesty, and enclosed the space which became sacred by acts of devotion, the awe which they excited made them respected; and, in course of time, old age and custom made them venerable. But, at length, the Druids ceased to worship beneath the shadow of their branches; nevertheless, the awe with which they were at first

invested still continued, though that which had inFine and noble trees were

spired it was no more. those old oaks, but the breadth of their ramification injured contiguous growth; and, as they had attained all the perfection of which they were capable, the period was nigh when they would begin to decline in vigour, and become unsound in substance. Ere long, they would gradually decay on the soil on which they had grown, if left to the process of unassisted nature. But, happily, the lord of the soil wanted the wood for naval construction; and decided, though not without much remorse and misgiving, that the venerable oaks of the Druids required the operation of the axe. And thus, before the timber was good for nothing, were the oaks, though once sacred, cut down; room thereby being made for the rising underwood to branch out and strengthen in its turn.

Such are human institutions. Seldom attaining in less than a century to their full growth, seldom do they retain for much more than a century their strength and utility. Nations, it is said, unhappily, obey the fate of their institutions, and wither with

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them, when they prop and plumb and plaster too carefully their decaying establishments; but recover, on the contrary, a juvenile and vernal invigoration, by the excision of mouldering branches, parasitical plants, and crowded scantlings and stifling shade. The Druids had ceased to worship within the grove of sacred oaks when Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio began to utter their parables in rhyme or numerous prose. To be sure, there were still mummers who mimicked the forms and ceremonies of the old religion, and claimed to be the rightful owners of the spot. But these men were so immoral, ignorant, and oppressive; became so infamous, both by the precepts they uttered and the example that they set up, that there was scarcely a child or a public beggar who was not cognizant of the cheat, and despised them as wretched pretenders and unholy hypocrites. Descendants from the veritable and venerable Druids they might have been; but they had long ago abdicated their commissions as the maintainers of the true Druidical culture, and were no longer entitled to speak with authority, or to mediate for the people with the Object

of adoration. The salt had lost its savour, and there was nothing wherewith it could be salted anew.

What the children and the Lazzaroni of Italy saw plainly, such men as Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio could not fail to see still more distinctly. Dante set, indeed, a precedent and example for the most vehement protestation against the abuses and corruptions of the Church of Rome. A new life of thought and feeling had, in fact, been for some time in progress. This Petrarca most unreservedly expressed, filled to overflowing, as he was, with the mighty impulse which was then agitating the heart of Christendom; to the impetus of which he likewise contributed by adding thereto the tone and voice of love:-thus advancing mysticism under the disguise of passion. Still true religion remained the property of the poet and the mystic, or the sage; it had not yet been made the inheritance of the people. This was reserved for Boccaccio, to whom was committed the task of rendering it more attractive, by investing it with a romantic costume. His romance had a burgher and civic character-precisely the popular element fitted