ashamed, Thor seizes her- and is worsted. On their departure, the host escorts them politely a little way, and says to Thor: 'Be not so mortified; you have been deceived. That race you witnessed was a race with Thought. That horn had one end in the Ocean: you did diminish it, as you will see when you come to the shore; this is the ebb. But who can drink the fathomless? And the cat,-ah! we were terror-stricken when we saw one paw off the floor; for that is the Midgard-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up the created world. As for the hag,why, she was Time; and who, of men or gods, can prevail over her? Then, too, look at these three glens,-by the timely interposition of a mountain, your strokes made these! Adieu, and a word of advice,- better come no more to Jotunheim!' Grim humor this, overlying a sublime, uncomplaining melancholy,— mirth resting upon sadness, as the rainbow upon the tempest. To this day it runs in the blood.

Therefore, the one thing needful, the everlasting duty, is to be brave. The right use of Fate is to bring our conduct up to the loftiness of nature. Let a man have not less the flow of the river, the expansion of the oak, the steadfastness of the hills. Heroism is the highest good. Over you, at each moment, hangs a threatening sword, which may in the next prove fatal. Life in itself has no value, and its ideal termination, to be kept constantly in view, is to fall heroically in fight. The Choosers will lead you to the Hall of Odin, only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither:

The coward thinks to live forever,
If he avoid the weapon's reach;

But Age, which overtakes at last,

Twines his gray hair with pain and shame.'

Hold to your purpose with the tug of gravitation, believing that you can shun no danger that is appointed nor incur one that is not. Thus did these old Northmen. Silent and indomitable,

In the prow with head uplifted

Stood the chief like wrathful Thor:
Through his locks the snow-flakes drifted,
Bleached their hue from gold to hoar;

Mid the crash of mast and rafter

Norsemen leaped through death with laughter,
Up through Valhal's wide-flung door."

Old kings, about to die, had their bodies laid in a ship, the ship sent forth with sails set, and a slow fire burning it; that they might be buried at once in the sky and in the sea!

Wild and bloody was this valor of the Northmen. True, but they were ferocious-bloody-minded. Murder was their trade, and hence their pleasure. 'Lord, deliver us from the fury of the Jutes,' says an ancient litany. The ceremonials of religion assumed a cruel and sanguinary character. Prisoners taken in battle were sacrificed by the victors, sometimes subjects by their kings, and even children by their parents. Bodies white and huge, stomachs ravenous. Six meals a day barely sufficed. The heroes of Valhal gorge themselves upon the flesh of a boar which is cooked every morning, but becomes whole again every night. Lovers of gambling and strong drink. Seated on their stools, by the light of the torch, they listened to battle-songs and heroic legends as they drank their ale, while the lordly hall thundered, and the ale was spilled.' In Paradise, the elect drink from a river of ale! 'Disputes,' says Tacitus, 'as will be the case with people in liquor, frequently arise, and are seldom confined to opprobrious epithets. The quarrel generally ends in a scene of blood.' Here are the germs of nineteenth-century vices. Intrepid in war, in peace they lie by the fireside, sluggish and dirty, eating and drinking.

Established in England, they have brought with them their customs, sentiments, and habits. They are still gluttonous, untamed, butcherly. To dance among naked swords is their recreation. To drink is their necessity. Later on, they quarrel about the amount each shall drink from the common cup, and the Archbishop puts pegs in the vessel, that each thirsty soul shall take no more than his just proportion.

Every man is obliged to appear ready-armed, to repel predatory bands. A hundred years measure the reign of fourteen kings, seven of whom are slain and six deposed. King Ælla's ribs are divided from his spine, his lungs drawn out, and salt thrown into his wounds. Attendants who are preparing a royal banquet are seized, their heads and limbs severed, placed in vessels of wine, mead, ale, and cider, with a message to the king: If you go to your farm, you will find there plenty of salt meat, you will do well to carry more with you.'

but

They have made one remove from barbarism. Once murder was expiated, as all other crimes, by blows (from five to a thousand), the gift of a female to the offended party, or a fine of gold; now, by money-fines only. Here, by implication, in the Saxon Code of laws, is the social status of the sixth century. Mark with what minutiæ it seeks to repress the irruptive tendencies of a restive and disordered society:

'These are the Laws King Ethelbert established in Agustine's day:

2. If the king his people to him call, and any one to them harm does, two fines shall be paid, and to the king 50 shillings.

8. If in the king's town any one a man slay, 50 shillings shall be paid.

13. If any one in an earl's town a man kills, 12 shillings shall be paid.

19. If a highway robbery be committed, 6 shillings shall be paid.

35. If bones bare become, 3 shillings shall be paid.

57. If a man beat another with the fist on the nose, 3 shillings.

64. If a thigh be broken, 12 shillings shall be paid; if he halt become, then shall be summoned friends who arbitrate.

65. If a rib broken be, 3 shillings shall be paid.

68. If a foot be cut off, 50 shillings shall compensate.

69.

If the large toe be cut off, 10 shillings shall compensate.

70. For every other toe, half the sum as has been said for the fingers.

81. If any one take a maiden by force, he shall pay the owner 50 shillings; and afterwards buy her according to the owner's will.'

Formerly, too, they slew themselves, dying as they had lived—in blood. Now, in the eleventh century, an earl, about to die of disease but unable wholly to repress the ferocious instinct, exclaims:

What a shame for me not to have been permitted to die in so many battles, and to end thus by a cow's death. At least put on my breast-plate, gird on my sword, set my helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, my battle-axe in my right, so that a stout warrior like myself may die as a warrior.'

But in this human animal-let it not be forgotten-abide noble dispositions, which will wax nobler as he climbs the heights of purer vision. In manners, severe; in inclinations, grave; valorous and liberty-loving. If he is cruel, he refuses to be shackled. In his own home, he is his own master. No Feudalism yet only a voluntary subordination to a leader. Required to associate himself with a superior, he chooses him as a friend, and follows him to the death. He is infamous as long as he lives, who returns from the field of battle without his chief.'

Amid the savagery of barbarian life, he feels no sentiment stronger than friendship. An exile, waking from his dream of the long ago, says:

In blithe habits full oft we, too, agreed that naught else should divide us except death alone; at length this is changed, and, as if it had never been, is now our friendship. To endure enmities man orders me to dwell in the bowers of the forest, under the oak tree in this carthly cave. Cold is this earth-dwelling; I am quite wearied out. Dim are the dells, high up are the mountains, a bitter city of twigs, with briars overgrown, a joyless abode. My friends are in the earth; those loved in life,- the tomb holds them. The grave is guarding, while I above alone am going. Under the oak-tree, beyond this earth-cave,there I must sit the long summer day.'

He is over-brave. He places his happiness in battle and his beauty in death. The coward is drowned in the mud under a hurdle, or is immolated.

The true home-life, out of which are the issues of national life, is foreshadowed by the respect with which woman is treated. She inherits property and bequeaths it; associates with the men at their feasts, and is respected. The law surrounds her with guarantees, and accords her protection. The freeman who presses the finger of a freewoman, is liable to a fine of six hundred pence; of twelve hundred, if he touches the arm. 'Almost alone among the barbarians,' says Tacitus, 'they are content with one wife'; then, perhaps with a bitter thought of Rome, 'No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and be corrupted.' A chivalric sense of delicacy, indeed, we may not expect. She attends to the indoor and outdoor work, while her husband dozes in a half stupor by the fire. His companion in war, she is his drudge in peace. As little may we look for the finer instincts of the womanly nature. Brynhild compels her suitors to contend with her in the games of spear-throwing, leaping, and stone-hurling, under penalty of death in case of defeat. Atle's wife kills her children, and one day, on his return from the carnage, gives him their hearts to eat, served in honey, and laughs as she tells him on what he has fed. Devotion there is, stronger than life or death, and grief too deep for tears. With a fierce kind of joy, the maid expires on the grave of her lover. Balder's wife accompanies him to the Death-kingdom; and while he sends his ring to Odin, she sends as final remembrance her thimble to Freyja. Loke's wife stands by his side, and receives the venom-drops, as they fall, in a cup which she empties as often as it is filled.

The Celt is gay, emotional, easily elevated and as easily depressed. He knows not how to plod, would leap to results, has a passion for color and form. The Teuton is steady, is not

dazzled by show, looks more to the inner fact of things. It inspires the one to be addressed in the words of Napoleon,'Soldiers, from the summits of yonder Pyramids, forty ages behold you;' ;" it nerves the other to be told in the severe phrase of Nelson, England expects every man to do his duty.' What sentiment is to the one, interest is to the other.

If, again, the Teuton has less of brilliancy than the Norman, he has more of patient strength. If he is less passionate, he is more reflective. If he is less voluble, he has the deep conviction and the indomitable will that have preserved his continuity through all revolutionary changes, and made him the most irresistible force in European politics. If he is less the artist of the beautiful, he is more inclined to the serious and sublime. Did ever any people form so tragic a conception of life, get so free and direct a glance into the deeps of thought, or banish so completely from its dreams the sweetness of enjoyment and the softness of pleasure? Here is the shadow, of which the Christian ideal is the substance.

Do but consider the singular adaptation of this soil for the reception of the new faith. Back in the days of heathendom we may find the first suggestion of the spirit which led to the Reformation of an after age- the revolt against the sensuous worship of Rome - when Tacitus says of the old Germanic tribes that they do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance. They consecrate woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstraction which they see only with the spiritual eye. This feeling of a mysterious infinity, of the dark Beyond, this sincerity of personal and original sentiment, predisposes the mind to Christianity; it makes the supreme distinction between races, as between great souls and little souls. Gregory had seen slaves in the market at Rome, and their faces were beautiful. they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. that forms so fair should have no light within, he the name of their nation. 'Angles,' he was told. 'Angles!' said Gregory; they have the faces of Angels, and they ought to be made fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven. But of what prov

He was told Sorry to think asked what was

The Celt is the spiritual progenitor of the Frenchman.