And the organ pealed, and the children's voices in the choir sounded sweet and soft. The clear sunshine streamed warmly through the window into the pew where Karen sat. Her heart was so full of sunshine and peace, and joy, that it broke. Her soul flew on the sunshine to God, and there no one asked after the red shoes.
Hans Christian Andersen is an excellent allegorist, and has very ingeniously woven together a most interesting fabric in this story of Karen, who, I am sure, every child cannot fail to see is a fabulous heroine. And yet there is something so simple and touching in the whole story, from beginning to end, that one can scarcely read it without weeping over her sufferings, and wondering in their hearts at the severity of her punishment.
In former times there was a real belief in supernatural things among the simple-minded, a belief which, it seems to me, was much more in accordance with the Christian character than the senseless unbelief in every thing which cannot be explained according to natural laws, which is certainly very much the case at the present day among the wise and learned, and much more to be regretted than the credulousness of other days.
NAUGHTY MARIAN.
