Death-song of King Regner Lodbrog, affords full confirmation of all we have said on this ferocity of character of the Scandinavians. This prince, who was king of Denmark, flourished about the end of the eighth, or beginning of the ninth century. After a

life of great military glory, he was at last made prisoner by Ella, a Northumbrian prince, and condemned to die by the poison of vipers. Lodbrog died with the usual intrepidity of his countrymen. He drowned the acute feelings of his sufferings by singing this chronicle of his exploits, while his attendants, who stood around him, joined at stated intervals in a sort of chorus, "We hewed with our swords." In this death-song, Lodbrog seems to derive the highest pleasure from recounting all the acts of slaughter and carnage that he had committed in his lifetime. These were his only consolation: they were, in his idea, a certain passport to the joys of Paradise, and insured for him a distinguished place at the banquet of Odin. After enumerating a series of heroic deeds, but all of a most atrocious and sanguinary nature, he thus concludes: "What is more beautiful than to see the heroes pushing on through the battle, though fainting with their wounds! What boots it that the timid youth flies from the combat? he shall not escape from misery; who can avoid the fate which is ordained for him? I did not dream that I should have fallen a sacrifice to Ella, whose shores I have covered with heaps of the slain. But there is a never-failing consolation for my spirit,-the table of Odin is prepared for the brave. There the hero shall know no grief. There we shall quaff the amber liquor from the capacious skulls. I will not tremble when I approach the hall of the god of death. Now the serpents gnaw my vitals; but it is a cordial to my soul that my enemy shall quickly follow me, for my sons will revenge my death. War was my delight from my youth, and from my childhood I was pleased with the bloody spear. No sigh shall disgrace my last moments. The immortals will not disdain to admit me into their presence. Here let me end my song-the heavenly virgins summon me away-the, hours of my life are at an end-I exult and smile at death!"

We have given some idea of the religious belief among these nations. It is proper that we should say something of their mode of worship.

Tacitus, in speaking of the religious worship of the ancient Germans, remarks, that they had neither temples nor idols; that they thought it impious to suppose that the Divinity could be contained within the walls of a building raised by man; and that it was degrading to the dignity of the Supreme Being to represent him in the human figure.* Such, likewise, were originally the notions of all the Celtic tribes. The open air was the temple of

"Cæterum nec cohibere parietibus Deos, neque in ullam humani oris speciem assimilare, ex magnitudine cœlestium arbitrantur."

the Divinity; and a forest, or grove of oaks whose venerable gloom was suited to the solemnity of the occasion, was the place where it was usual to worship by prayer and sacrifice. The altar was composed of one immense stone, or of three placed together, forming a base for one of a larger size laid at top, to serve as a table. A single, a double, and sometimes a triple row of stones, fixed in the ground in a circular form, surrounded the altar. Of these, which are called Druidical circles, there are vast numbers to be found through all the northern kingdoms of Europe, and no where more frequently than in Britain.* The most remarkable monument of this kind at present existing is that prodigious circle upon Salisbury Plain, which is known by the name of Stonehenge.† In the northern counties of Scotland, we every where meet with smaller circles of the same kind, which there seems no reason to doubt were devoted to religious purposes. In these groves, and upon these altars, the Druids offered sacrifices of various kinds, the most acceptable of which were human victims. This was not to be wondered at, considering that it was their opinion, that the Supreme Deity placed his chief delight in blood and slaughter. With these barbarous people the number nine was supposed to have something in it of peculiar sanctity. Every ninth month there was a sacrifice offered up to the gods of nine human victims: and in the first month of every ninth year was held an extraordinary solemnity, which was marked with dreadful slaughter. Dithmar, an historian, of the eleventh century, has the following passage: "There is," says he, "in Zeeland, a place named Lederun, where every ninth year, in the month of January, the Danes assemble in great multitudes; and upon that occasion they sacrifice ninety-nine men, and the same number of horses, dogs, and cocks, in the firm assurance of thus obtaining the favor and protection of their gods."

The victims, upon those occasions, were commonly captives

*There are two of these monuments, of a very large size, near Stromness, in the Orkney Islands, one of a semicircular form of thirty-two feet radius, consisting of seven stones, from fourteen to eighteen feet in height, and the other a circle of 336 feet diameter, consisting of sixteen stones, from nine to fourteen feet in height. Round this ditch, at unequal distances from each other, are eight small artificial eminences. The altar stood without the circle, to the southeast. At some distance from the semicircle there is a stone eight feet high, with a round hole or perforation in it; and it is customary at this day, among the country people, when a solemn promise is made (for example of marriage) for the contracting parties to join their hands through this hole. This is called the promise of Odin, and is held to be particularly inviolable.-Memoirs of the Soc. of Scott. Antiq., vol. i. p. 263.

† Stonehenge consists of two concentric circles, of which the outer is 180 feet in diameter. The upright stones of which these circles are composed, are placed at the distance of three and a half feet from each other, and joined two and two at the top by stones laid across, with tenons fitted to the mortises in the uprights, for keeping the transverse stones in their place. The size of these stones is various, from four to seven yards in height, and generally of the breadth of two yards, and thickness of one. The walk between the circles is three hun

taken in war; and such were the honors paid to them, and the flattering prospects set before them by the Druids, of the great rewards awaiting them in a future state, that these deluded creatures went exulting to the altar, esteeming it the highest honor to be thus peculiarly set apart for the service of the great Odin. Lucan, in the third book of his "Pharsalia," has a very fine passage, in which he has touched several of the most striking peculiarities of the druidical superstition, a passage in which there is a wonderful assemblage of those circumstances which strike the mind with horror.

"There is," says he, "without the walls of Marseilles a sacred grove, which had never been touched by axe since the creation. The trees of it grew so thick, and were so interwoven, that they suffered not the rays of the sun to pierce through their branches; but a dreary damp and perfect darkness reigned through the place. Neither nymphs nor sylvan gods could inhabit this recess, it being destined for the most inhuman mysteries. There was nothing to be seen there but a multitude of altars, upon which they sacrificed human victims, whose blood dyed the trees with horrid crimson. If ancient tradition may be credited, no bird ever perched upon their boughs, no beast ever trod under them, no wind ever blew through them, nor thunderbolt did ever touch them. These tall oaks, as well as the black water that winds in different channels through the place, fill the mind with dread and horror. The figures of the god of the grove are a kind of rude and shapeless trunks, covered over with a dismal yellow moss. It is the genius of the Gauls," continues he, "thus to reverence gods of whom they know not the figure; and their ignorance of the object of their worship increases their veneration. There is a report that this grove is often shaken and strangely agitated; and that dreadful sounds are heard from its deep recesses; that the trees, if destroyed or thrown down, arise again of themselves; that the forest is sometimes seen to be on fire, without being consumed, and that the oaks are twined about with monstrous serpents. The Gauls dare not live in it, from the awe of the divinity that inhabits it, and to whom they entirely abandon it. Only at noon and at midnight a priest goes trembling into it, to celebrate its dreadful mysteries; and is in continual fear lest the deity to whom it is consecrated should appear to him."

From this description, we may perceive with what artful policy the Druids had heightened the sanctity of their own character, by concealing the mysteries of their worship, and pervading the minds of the people with the deepest awe and reverence for every thing that regarded that religion of which they were the guardians. No

Similar to this is the fine expression of Tacitus, in describing the secret worship of the goddess Hertha, or Earth, by the Angles and some other of the Germanic nations: "Arcanus hinc terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit Illud quod tantum perituri vident." Tacit. de Mor. Germ. cap. 40.

vulgar step durst enter the sacred grove, and the priest himself feigned to approach it with fear and trembling. It was by these arts that the Druids, as all historians agree, had an influence and ascendency over the minds of the people, far exceeding that of the priests under any other system of pagan worship. Armed with this influence, they did not confine themselves to the duties of the priesthood, but exercised in fact, many of the most important offices of the civil magistrate.* And so very powerful was the hold which this order of men had upon the minds of the people, that it became a necessary policy with the Romans to depart in this instance from their accustomed spirit of toleration; since they found it impossible to preserve their conquests over any of the nations of Celtic origin, till they had utterly exterminated the Druids, and abolished every vestige of that potent superstition. This was the policy of the Romans in Gaul, as well as in Britain; and in those provinces it was successful. But, in the meantime, the Hydra wounded in one quarter was daily increasing in the strength and vigor of its principal members. And the primitive tribes of Scandinavia amply revenged the injuries of their brethren of Gaul and of Britain.

Thus, from the preceding review of the principal features which composed the character of the ancient nations from whose blood we are sprung, it may be inferred, that nature, education, and prevailing habits, all concurred to form them for an intrepid and conquering people. Their bodily frame invigorated by the climate in which they inhabited-inured from infancy to dangers and to difficulties-war their constant occupation-believing in a fixed and inevitable destiny-and taught by their religion that an heroic sacrifice of life was a certain assurance of the enjoyment of eternal happiness ;-how could a race of men, under these circumstances, fail to be the conquerors of the world?

In this short dissertation on the manners of the North, I have endeavored to give some idea of the original character and genius of those branches of that great family which were destined to overrun and subdue the fairest regions of Europe. It remains now to exhibit this people in a different point of view, and to mark the character which they assumed in their new establishments. Vulgar prejudice has long annexed the idea of barbarian to the name of Goth, and it has been rashly and erroneously imagined, that the same rudeness and ferocity of manners which it is acknowledged distinguished these northern heroes in their native seats, attended their successors while settled in the polished provinces of the Roman empire. We shall see them, on the contrary, when sovereigns of imperial Rome, superior in many respects to

This Tacitus plainly informs us of: "Cæterum neque animadvertere, neque vincire, neque verberare quidem, nisi sacerdotibus permissum, non quasi in pœnam nec ducis jussu, sed velut Deo imperante."

their immediate predecessors, and aspiring at a character of refinement, moderation, and humanity, which would have done no dishonor to the better times and more fortunate periods of that declining state.

CHAPTER VII.

Character of the Gothic Nations after the Conquest of Italy.

IT has been usual to consider the Gothic nations as a savage and barbarous race, pouring down from the inclement and uncultivated regions of the North, marking their course with bloodshed and devastation, and, like hungry wolves, falling upon the provinces of the empire, and involving all in undistinguished ruin. It is certainly not surprising that the name of Goth should to the ears of the moderns convey the idea of ferocity and barbarism, when we find popular writers, and those even of no limited degree of information, promoting this false and erroneous opinion, by holding forth a few instances of brutality and ignorance among some of the princes of the Gothic nations, as characteristic of the manners and genius of the whole. Voltaire, in his Essai sur les Mœurs et l'Esprit des Nations (chap. xvii.), after recapitulating some examples of the cruelty of Clovis and his successors in the monarchy of the Franks (and among the rest, the monstrous fiction of the atrocious murders said to be committed by Queen Brunehilda), concludes with this observation, that besides the foundation of some religious houses, there is no trace remaining of those frightful ages but a confused tradition of misery and devastation :-"Il ne reste de monumens de ces âges affreux que des fondations de monastères et un confus souvenir de misère et de brigandage. Figurezvous des déserts, où les loups, les tigres, et les renards égorgent un bétail épars et timide; c'est le portrait de l'Europe pendant tant de siècles." That this portrait of Europe, as M. Voltaire terms it, was a very false and exaggerated one, we shall now proceed to show.

What were the manners of those Gothic nations before they left their seats in the North, we have already seen, and must acknowledge that, at this period, their character, if not marked by absolute barbarism, was at least distinguished by a most sanguinary and ferocious spirit. This, however, is not absolutely inconsistent with a species of humanity, and is frequently allied to great gen