FAIRIES. 
789 
The worst way of applying the force of a horse is to make hinr 
carry or draw up hill ; for if the hill be steep, three men will do 
more than a horse, each man climbing up faster with a burden of 
one hundred pounds weight, than a horse that is loaded with three 
hundred pounds; a difference which is owing to the position of the 
parts of the human body, being better in climbing than those of a horse. 
On the other hand, the best way of applying the force of a horse, is 
in a horizontal direction, wherein a man can exert least force ; thus 
a man weighing one hundred and forty pounds, and drawing a boat 
along by means of a rope coming over his shoulders, cannot draw 
above twenty-seven pounds, or exert above one-seventh part of the 
force of a horse employed to the same purpose. The very best and 
most effectual posture in a man, is that of rowing : wherein he not 
only acts with more muscles at once, for overcoming the resistance, 
than in any other position ; but as he pulls backwards, the weight of 
his body assists by way of lever. — See Desaguliers, Exp. Phil. vol. i. 
p. 241, where we have several other observations relative to force 
acquired by certain positions of the body, from which that author 
accounts for most feats of strength and activity. 
Fairies. 
These fabled beings were most usually imagined to be women of 
an order superior to human nature, yet subject to wants, passions, 
accidents, and even-death ; sprightly and benevolent while young and 
handsome,— -morose, peevish, and malignant, if ugly, or in the decline of 
their beauty ; fond of appearing in white, whence they are often 
called the white ladies. Jervaise of Tilbury, marshal of the kingdom 
of Arles, who lived in the beginning of the thirteenth century, writes 
thus concerning them, in a work inscribed to the emperor Otho IV. 
‘*It has been asserted by persons of unexceptionable credit, that fairies 
used to choose themselves gallants from among men, and rewarded 
their attachment with affluence of worldly goods ; but if they married, 
or boasted of a fairy’s favours, they as severely smarted for such 
indiscretion.” The like tales still go current in the ci-devant pro- 
vince of Languedoc, where there is not a village without some 
ancient seat or cavern which had the honour of being a fairy’s resi- 
dence, or some spring where a fairy used to bathe. 
This idea of fairies has a near affinity with that of the Greeks and 
Romans concerning the nymphs of the woods, mountains, rivers, 
and springs ; and an ancient scholiast on Theocritus says, “The 
nymphs are demons which appear on the mountains in the figure of 
w'omen.” The Arabs and other orientals have also their grim and 
verij of whom they entertain the like notions. 
But fairies have been likewise described as of both sexes, and 
generally as of minute stature, though capable of assuming various 
forms and dimensions. The most charming representation of these 
children of romantic fancy, is in the Midsummer Night’s, Dream of 
Sliakspeare,aDd in a work recently published by Thomas Hood, entitled 
The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies. Spenser’s Fairy Queen is an epic 
poem, under the characters of fairies. This sort of poetry raises a 
