standing man I cannot move to fear, because he knows I have no power to do hurt.

My nightly business I have told,
To play these tricks I use of old;
When candles burn both blue and dim,
Old folks will say here's Fairy Grimm.
More tricks than these I use to do.
Hereat cry'd Robin, Ho, ho, hoh !

And morning being come, they all hastened to Fairyland; where I think they yet remain.

A

Golden Locks; for his hair was very beautiful and long, and it hung down to his waist, and was like silken or golden threads. So tenderly did the old king love him, that every thought of his was only for the prince's happiness. The prince's mother died when her son was but three years old; and as he was the only child the king and queen had ever had, the life of the old king might be said to be bound up in that of the youth.

In the country where the prince lived the winds were stormy, and blew hard as they do in the long, cold winter nights; the sea was always rough, tossing itself up as high as a mountain, and the king's palace was built on a rock, round which the waves dashed and foamed all day long.

When the young prince grew up to be twenty-one years old, messengers

were sent to find a princess in some of the neighbouring kingdoms, to whom he could be married. Then, on the day appointed, there came ambassadors from dukes, princes, and kings, without end, bringing with them pictures of all sorts of ladies, who were willing to marry the prince; for the old king was as wealthy as his son was handsome. There were pictures of fat ladies and thin ladies, short ladies, tall ladies, dark, and fair: princesses of all kinds, who would be glad to have a young prince with good looks and money to boot. The old king would make no choice himself, but left it all to the prince. Then the prince went to his tutor (an old nobleman, whom he much loved), and wished to know how to choose from so many; and the old nobleman gave him a glass, which he had received at the prince's birth from the fairy who presided over the

country; and he told the prince to look at the pictures through the glass, and then he would be able to see if the lady whose picture he beheld was as good as she seemed to be. So the glass was tried, and one princess was found to be a scold, another a dolt, a third fond of dress, a fourth a gossip, a fifth a slattern, and so on till the prince found he had not a picture left; and then all the ambassadors went

away.

Things went on as before till one day, some three months after sending forth the messengers, a tall ship, which had come a long way over the seas, brought an ambassador, who presented his letters and the portrait of a lady on a ring. Then the prince, who had begun to despair of ever finding a wife, tried the glass on the picture in the ring, and he saw that the princess was twenty times more beau