to mirth,--with the mirth of fairies she has all possible sympathy. Here
and there in the thicket the scarce honeysuckles--in August honeysuckles
are somewhat out of season--hung their rich festoons, and at that moment
they were crowded with the elderly fairies, who had given up dancing and
taken to scandal. Besides the honeysuckle you might see the hawkweed and
the white convolvulus, varying the soft verdure of the thicket; and
mushrooms in abundance had sprung up in the circle, glittering in the
silver moonlight, and acceptable beyond measure to the dancers: every one
knows how agreeable a thing tents are in a _fete champetre_! I was
mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle entirely round; for
there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mortals, through which a fairy at
least might catch a view of a brook that was close at hand, rippling in
the stars, and checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the
surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the silver
water-lily. Then the trees themselves, in their prodigal variety of
hues,--the blue, the purple, the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery
verdure, and the deep mass of shade frowning into black; the willow, the
elm, the ash, the fir, and the lime, "and, best of all, Old England's
haunted oak;" these hues were broken again into a thousand minor and
subtler shades as the twinkling stars pierced the foliage, or the moon
slept with a richer light upon some favoured glade.

It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as I said before, were chatting
among the honeysuckles; the young were flirting, and dancing, and making
love; the middle-aged talked politics under the mushrooms; and the queen
herself and half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning their pleasure
from a little mound covered with the thickest moss.

"It has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzenheim left us,"
said the fairy Nip.