Fairy Tales from All Nations

The time has been, but happily exists no longer, when it would have been necessary to offer an apology for such a book as this. In those days it was not held thatBeauty is its own excuse for being;on the contrary, a spurious utilitarianism reigned supreme in literature, and fancy and imagination were told to fold their wings, and travel only in the dusty paths of every-day life. Fairy tales, and all such flights into the region of the supernatural, were then condemned as merely idle things,...