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 512 SYLVIE AND BRUNO CONCLUDED appeared in December, 1889. At any rate, among all the letters I received about it, there was only one which ex- pressed any suspicion that it was not a final conclusion. This letter was from a child. She wrote "we were so glad, when we came to the end of the book, to find that there was no ending-up, for that shows us that you are going to write a sequel." It may interest some of my Readers to know the theory on which this story is constructed. It is an attempt to show what might possibly happen, supposing that Fairies really existed; and that they were sometimes visible to us, and we to them; and that they were sometimes able to assume human form : and supposing, also, that human beings might sometimes become conscious of what goes on in the Fairy-world — by actual transference of their immaterial essence, such as we meet with in "Esoteric Buddhism." I have supposed a Human being to be capable of vari- ous psychical states, with varying degrees of conscious- ness, as follows: — {a) the ordinary state, with no consciousness of the presence of Fairies; {b) the "eerie" state, in which, while conscious of ac- tual surroundings, he is also conscious of the presence of Fairies; {c) a form of trance, in which, while unconscious of actual surroundings, and apparently asleep, he (i.e. his immaterial essence) migrates to other scenes, in the actual world, or in Fairyland, and is conscious of the presence of Fairies. I have also supposed a Fairy to be capable of migrating from Fairyland into the actual world, and of assuming, at pleasure, a Human form; and also to be capable of various psychical states, viz.