Daily Thoughts

The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and mysteries -- these fed Shakespeare's youth. Why should they not feed our children's? That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous and fantastic -- has that a merely evil root? No, surely! it is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of "the heaven which lies about us in our infancy;" angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life. It is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth calls those

". . . . obstinate questionings,
. . . . . .
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised."

Introductory Lecture, Queen's College.
1848.