the will. This is delightfully exemplified in the 'Arabian Nights'
Entertainments', and indeed, more or less, in other works of the same
kind. In all these there is the same activity of mind as in dreaming,
that is--an exertion of the fancy in the combination and recombination of
familiar objects so as to produce novel and wonderful imagery. To this
must be added that these tales cause no deep feeling of a moral
kind--whether of religion or love; but an impulse of motion is
communicated to the mind without excitement, and this is the reason of
their being so generally read and admired.

I think it not unlikely that the 'Milesian Tales' contained the germs of
many of those now in the Arabian Nights; indeed it is scarcely possible
to doubt that the Greek empire must have left deep impression on the
Persian intellect. So also many of the Roman Catholic legends are taken
from Apuleius. In that exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, the allegory
is of no injury to the dramatic vividness of the tale. It is evidently a
philosophic attempt to parry Christianity with a 'quasi'-Platonic
account of the fall and redemption of the soul.

The charm of De Foe's works, especially of 'Robinson Crusoe', is founded
on the same principle. It always interests, never agitates. Crusoe
himself is merely a representative of humanity in general; neither his
intellectual nor his moral qualities set him above the middle degree of
mankind; his only prominent characteristic is the spirit of enterprise
and wandering, which is, nevertheless, a very common disposition. You
will observe that all that is wonderful in this tale is the result of
external circumstances--of things which fortune brings to Crusoe's hand.

[Footnote 1: Partly from Mr. Green's note. 'Ed.']