Perrault’s _Contes_ are essentially romantic; the Sleeping Beauty gives place only to Persephone,—she and her sleeping household, shut in by the great hedge of thorns; but every tale has quaint human touches which puts it precisely at the right angle to life: the little girl, her basket of goodies, and the sick grandmother, all things of experience; and then, with a quick turn of the “World Upside Down”—_the Grandmother that was really a Wolf_ in bed. A nurse might have told it well enough; but the artist knew the true colours, the just economy of lines, and the point where one could turn from the pictures and listen for talk.