satisfied with that, but she said as she went away, "To-morrow you must begin to work."

When the girl was alone again she did not know what to think or to do; and in her trouble she went up to the window, and there she saw three women coming along. The first had a broad paddle-foot, the second had such a big under-lip that it hung down over her chin, and the third had a broad thumb. They stopped before the window, looked up, and asked the girl what was the matter. She told them her trouble. Then they offered her their help and said, "If you will invite us to your wedding, not be ashamed of us, and call us your cousins, and seat us at your table too, then we will spin your flax up, and that quickly." "Gladly," said she: "come in and set to work immediately." So she let the three queer women in, and cleared a little space in the first room, where they could sit down and begin their spinning. One of them drew the thread and trod the wheel, the second wet the thread, the third twisted it and struck with her finger on the table; and as often as she struck, a skein of yarn fell to the floor, and it was of the finest. She hid the three spinners from the queen, and showed her as often as she came the pile of spun yarn, so that the queen could not praise her enough. When the first room was empty, they began on the second, and then on the third, and that was soon cleared up too. Now the three women took their leave, and said to the girl, "Do not forget what you promised us. It will be your good fortune."

When the girl showed the queen the empty rooms and the great heap of yarn, she prepared for the wedding; and the bridegroom was delighted to get such a clever and industrious wife, and praised her very much. "I have three cousins," said the girl; "and since they have been very kind to me, I should not like to forget them in my happiness. Permit me to invite them to the wedding and to have them sit with me at the table." The queen and the bridegroom said, "Why should not we permit it?” Now when the feast began, the three women came in queer dress, and the bride said, "Welcome, dear cousins." "Oh!" said the bridegroom: "how did you get such ill-favored friends?" Then he went to the one with the broad paddle-foot and asked, "Where did you get such a broad foot?" "From the treadle," she answered, "from the treadle." Then the bridegroom went to the second and said, "Where did you get that hanging lip?" "From wetting yarn," she answered, "from wetting yarn." Then

he asked the third, "Where did you get the broad thumb?" "From twisting thread," she answered, "from twisting thread." Then the king's son was frightened and said, "Then my fair bride shall never, never touch a spinning-wheel again." And so she was rid of the horrid spinning.

NOTE BY THE Grimms.— From a tale from the duchy of Corvei; but that there are three women, each with a peculiar fault due to spinning, is taken from a Hessian story. In the former they are two very old women, who have grown so broad by sitting that they can hardly get into the room; from wetting the thread they had thick lips; and from pulling and drawing it, ugly fingers and broad thumbs. The Hessian story begins differently, too; namely, that a king liked nothing better than spinning, and so, at his farewell before a journey, left his daughters a great chest of flax that was to be spun on his return. To relieve them, the queen invited the three deformed women and put them before the king's eyes on his return. Prätorius in his 'Glückstopf' (pp. 404-406) tells the story thus: A mother cannot make her daughter spin, and so often beats her. A man who happens to see it, asks what it means. The mother answers, "I cannot keep her from spinning. She spins more flax than I can buy." The man answers, "Then give her to me for wife. I shall be satisfied with her cheerful diligence, though she brings no dowry." The mother is delighted, and the bridegroom brings the bride immediately a great provision of flax. She is secretly frightened, but accepts it, puts it in her room, and considers what she shall do. Then three women come to the window, one so broad from sitting that she cannot get in at the door, the second with an immense nose, the third with a broad thumb. They offer their services and promise to spin the task, if the bride on her wedding day will not be ashamed of them, will proclaim them her cousins and set them at her table. She consents; they spin up the flax, and the lover praises his betrothed. When now the wedding day comes, the three horrid women present themselves. The bride does them honor, and calls them cousins. The bridegroom is surprised, and asks how she comes by such illfavored friends. "Oh!" said the bride, "it's by spinning that they have become so deformed. One has such a broad back from sitting, the second has licked her mouth quite off, therefore her nose stands out so, and the third has twisted thread so much with her thumb." Then the bridegroom was troubled, and said to the bride she should never spin another thread as long as she lived, that she might not become such a monstrosity.

A third tale from the Oberlansitz,' by Th. Pescheck, is in Büsching's Weekly News. It agrees in general with Prätorius. One of the

three old women has sore eyes because the impurities of the flax have got into them, the second has a mouth from ear to ear on account of wetting thread, the third is fat and clumsy by much sitting at the spinning-wheel. A part of the story is in Norwegian in Asbjörnsen, and in Swedish in Cavallius. Mademoiselle L'Heretier's RicdinRicdon' agrees in the introduction, and the sette colenelle of the Pentameron is also connected with this tale.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

From the Preface to the Deutsche Grammatik›

T HAS cost me no long hesitation to prune back to the stock the first shoots of my granaries. A second growth, firmer and finer, has quickly followed; perhaps one may hope for flowers and ripening fruit. With joy I give to the public this work, now become more worthy of its attention, that I have carefully tended and brought to this end amid cares and privations, in which labor was sometimes a drudgery, and sometimes, and by God's goodness oftener, my comfort.

The fruitfulness of the field is of such a nature that it never fails; and no leaf from the sources can be re-examined that does not arouse by a more distant prospect or make one repent of past errors. If now a rich booty should win me less praise than a many-sided, careful, economical administration of a smaller treasure, the blame may fall on me, that I have not known how to draw from all the principles I have discovered the uses of which they were capable, and even that important observations sometimes stand in obscure places. Not all my assertions will stand; but by the discoveries of their weakness other paths will be opened, through which will break at last the truth: the only goal of honest labor, and the only thing that lasts when men have ceased to care for the names of like aspirants. What was hardest for us may be child's-play to posterity, hardly worth speaking of. Then truth will yield herself to new solutions of which, we had yet no hint, and will struggle with obstacles where we thought all made plain.

GEORGE GROTE

(1794-1871)

T IS a coincidence so striking as almost to put the English university system itself on the defensive, that neither Grote nor Gibbon owed anything to academic training. Gibbon indeed spent fourteen months at Oxford:-"the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." George Grote, the son of a London banker, ended his school days at sixteen, when he left the Charterhouse. He had been grounded in Latin by a devoted mother at five years, however, and he took with him to the bank little or no mathematics, and an enthusiastic love for metaphysics, classical literature, and history, which proved to be lifelong. From 1810 to 1820, under his father's roof, he devoted his early mornings and evenings to study. His most important older friends were the political economists James Mill, Ricardo, and Bentham; but they did not divert him from his historical interests. Even during his long engagement, he guided by letter the education and reading of his future wife, with a constant view to his own far-reaching plans for study and creative work.

GEORGE GROTE

With Grote's marriage to the brilliant and devoted Harriet Lewin, in 1820, began a happier epoch. He had now his own home and a moderate income. Mrs. Grote drew him somewhat into society, travel, and a widened. circle of friendship on the Continent as well as in London. These digressions only aided what would else have been too bookish and secluded a development. Mrs. Grote, however, was mistaken in her recollection that she herself first, in the autumn of 1823, suggested the subject of his chief life work: at least a year previous, the plan for the great 'History of Greece' had been formed. In 1830 his. father's death left Mr. Grote abundant wealth; nevertheless, the decade 1831-1841, which was spent in active political work as the leader in Parliament of the group known as philosophic radicals, did indeed reduce his systematic and untiring studies to mere desultory reading, and seemingly endangered his literary career. Yet even this.

experience, as he himself declares, was of indispensable use to him in comprehending the fiercer democratic politics of ancient Athens.

Returning early in 1842 from a brief stay in Italy, and severing altogether his relations with the bank the next year, he now first, in his fiftieth year, devoted his whole strength to his appointed task. His powerful review of Mitford's 'Greece' in 1843 prepared the way for the enthusiastic welcome accorded in 1845 to the first two volumes of his History of Greece.' The twelfth and closing volume did not appear until 1856.

Some adequate outlines of his life and character are essential to any fair appreciation of Mr. Grote's chief work. Indefatigable as a student, a fearless lover of truth, widely familiar with men and affairs, a wise philanthropist and a far-sighted reformer, Mr. Grote's noble personality gives weight to his every sentence, as an athlete's whole frame and training goes into each blow he strikes. It seems a trifling criticism upon such a man, to say he was not a literary artist. This is true, indeed, as to his choice of idiom and phrase. He has not that "curious felicity" which makes us linger lovingly over the very words in which a Plato, a Montaigne, a Burke casts his thought. Even in the delineation of a great scene, like the defeat at Syracuse or the downfall of Athens, he is rarely picturesque. He does not appeal indeed to the youthful imagination, but to the mature judgment. We can well imagine that this calm, even-toned, judicious voice made itself heard effectively in the debates of the English Com

mons.

Of course no one man can ever write an ideal history of that unique, creative, many-sided Hellenic race; but the work of Mr. Grote is still, a half-century after its creation, indispensable as an account of political institutions among the Greeks. Even here the thousands of newly discovered inscriptions, the fortunate reappearance of Aristotle's treatise on the Athenian Constitution, and the ceaseless march of special investigation, make desirable some fresh annotation upon almost every page. The familiarity with Greek lands and folk which gives a charm to Professor Curtius's work is missing from Mr. Grote's. Still more do we miss any warm enthusiasm for Hellenic art, which was so indispensable an element in their life. Even their literature is to him less a beautiful organism quivering with life than a source for more or less accurate information. In this and in many other respects he is curiously like the Athenian student of history and of truth, Thucydides, who could write, in the day of Phidias and Sophocles, as if he had never heard of a myth or a statue. It is true also that Grote is always an English liberal, finding in every page of history fresh reason for hope and trust in modern democracy. This indeed we do not regard as adverse criticism at all. If a man