brutish audacity, hardly above the level of the beast he slays.
In children, this delicate emotion of fear, growing out of their dependent condition, gives dignity and meaning to their courage when they are brave, and a delicious zest to their youthful delinquencies. Gray, in his chilly and melancholy manhood, years after he has resigned himself to never again being "either dirty or amused" as long as he lives, goes back like a flash to the unlawful delight of a schoolboy's stolen freedom:—
"Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy."
And who that has ever watched a party of children, listening with bright eyes and parted, lips to some weird, uncanny legend,—like that group of little girls for instance, in Mr. Charles Gregory's picture Tales and Wonders,—can doubt for a moment the "fearful joy" that terror lends them? Nowadays, it is true, their youthful ears are but too well guarded from such indiscretions until they are old enough to scoff at all fantastic folly, and the age at which they learn to scoff is one of
