be escaped. Here the candid reader, we are persuaded, will agree with us, whether he interpret the conclusion as establishing the truth of materialism, or, what is more likely, as reducing to an absurdity the opinions from which it flows. As for this, we leave him to his individual bias, content for the moment that he accept, as we believe he must, the conclusion itself. Our argument is strictly ad hominem.

We have now touched upon all that appears to us relevant and substantial in Prof. Huxley's magnificent plea. Concerning the inconceivability of " matter and force," in themselves, he indeed has some remarks, all just, and all expressed with his accustomed felicity, but not one of them to the present point. So far as we are aware, no materialist professes to be able, or holds it important, to follow phenomena, of whatever kind, behind the curtain of the infinite. The impossibility of doing it tells only against the discretion of him who makes the attempt. No one nowadays, barring perhaps some philosophic eaglet "mewing" his "mighty youth," is mad enough to try it. Prof. Huxley's account of his own boyish mishaps in the prosecution of this Quixotic enterprise is amusing, but the lesson it teaches, if he will pardon the remark, is needed by nobody, and at all events has no relevancy in this discussion. Materialism, to do it justice, deals solely with phenomena, asserting merely that the phenomena we call mental are evolved from the phenomena we call material, and, hence, are at bottom identical with them, whatever may be the common substance of the two orders of phenomena, as to which materialism asserts nothing, save only the self-same inconceivability adduced to confute it; and the infuriate adversary, who, with the drawn sword of analysis, runs that hapless ism out into the silent wilderness of noumena, should reproach himself, and not the innocent victim of his speculative rage. It would seem really as if at this point the wits of our polemical philosopher had gone a wool-gathering. To bring forward the inconceivability of noumena, as an objection to a doctrine which he himself had just defined in terms of phenomena, is a logical confusion of which we have not known him to be guilty before. Seldom, in truth, is such a master of controversy betrayed into so glaring an ignoratio elenchi. But Homer sometimes nods; though it should be said, in fairness to the wide-awake old bard, that he rarely takes his catnaps while he has on hand business of importance, and never when the fate of Troy is trembling in the balance. By the bye, Prof. Huxley is in the habit of saying that, if he were compelled to choose between idealism and materialism, he would take idealism, and of saying at the same time, with a touch of Pharisaical complacency, that he is not as those other men who would make mind the measure of the universe, forgetting or

overlooking the obvious inconsistency of the two assertions with each other, since idealism assumes that things exist only in the mind, independently of which, as it claims, they have no existence, thereby making mind not merely the measure of the universe, but the universe itself. Were he to execute his fond hypothetical resolve, he would jump out of the frying-pan into the fire; and there is no telling what he might or might not do if he should ever "discover" that he is in the frying-pan.

However, we do not hold a brief for "the beast materialism.” Our client in this case is the jewel consistency; in whose favor we now ask the opinion of the court, Prof. Huxley, it is plain, having failed to sustain his demurrer. The opinions which he fathers, if the court please, are all resolvable into materialism; and, now and here, have been so resolved. His demurrer, we submit, must be overruled.

AMERICA DISCOVERED AND CHRISTIANIZED IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.

THE

HE intelligent reader of current public events in this country. cannot have failed to notice frequent occurrences of late, which point to the discovery and colonization of the western continents, and parts of our own country, and the introduction of Christianity therein, five hundred years before the achievement of the great deeds by which Columbus brought the two continents almost face to face. On one day we read in the public prints of the unveiling in a great northwestern American city of a statue of Leif Ericson, the Northman, discoverer of America in the tenth century. We next read of the inauguration of a similar monument in honor of the same hero at Boston. And to-day we read a petition presented to the American Congress at its present session, asking that in the approaching celebration of the centennary of the Constitution, in 1889, a public and national recognition be made of the events commemorated by the Viking's statues at Milwaukee and Boston. This petition is signed by eminent scientists, antiquarians and historians in every part of our country, and to it we see appended the signatures of the leading officers and members of the Historical Societies of Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia and other States; of General James Grant Wilson and other members of the Genealogical and Bio

graphical Society of New York; of such artists as Daniel Huntington, Church, Moran, Brown, and others; of professors in our leading universities, and of many other most eminent and learned Americans. It is thus clear that the claim of Norse discoveries on this continent has entered into the living and current national traditions and life of our people. The learned few, the instructors of our people, seem satisfied and convinced. It is time now for this learning to be popularized and given to the people. The masses of our people must hear and judge. The present writer long ago investigated this claim of the Northmen and became convinced. It is proper first to state what achievements are claimed for the Northmen as the discoverers of our country, and this claim we will now state. The historical evidences in proof of the claim will be presented afterwards.

In the case of Columbus, who made a masterly and exhaustive study of the history of navigation before and up to his time, of the voyages of discovery before then achieved, of the traditions of the classic times in relation to the existence of continents beyond the then inhabited globe, as well as of more modern voyages, and had also explored the field scientifically as well as historically, there was an exact theory, a mass of direct and resultant information, and a firm conviction that, if afforded the means, he would discover the then unknown countries. We will refer again to this subject in another part of this article. But in the case of the Northmen no such methods were followed. The discovery made by them was in its very earliest stages the immediate result of accident; in the second stages the result of their love for the sea and habits of adventure and sea-roving; and in the third stages the result of their natural inclination to follow up the results thus attained. They were the most adventurous people of the world at that time, the most skilful and determined navigators, the most likely people of all nations to make the discovery of the lands lying so accessible beyond the Atlantic Ocean. Mr. Edward Everett justly remarked of them: "It is plain that no achievement of naval adventure, related of such a people, can be considered beyond the line of probability."

The Northmen, wandering fragments of Asiatic tribes, after traversing Europe, found a home and founded a nation in Norway, only when the sea arrested their progress. Here they achieved a permanent conquest and founded the mother country, from whose sea-indented shores proceeded so many expeditions pregnant with the fate of nations. The Orkneys, the Ferroës, Shetland and other distant lands and islands became familiar to these rovers of the seas. In 860, Naddod, a Norwegian pirate, on his voyage to the Ferroës, was carried far out of his course by a tempest, and this

accident led to his discovery of Iceland, the Ultima Thule of the ancients. This ice-clad island became a colony of the mother country. About the year 900 Rollo made the conquest of Normandy. In 1060 we find a Norman prince established in Apulia. In 1066 William the Conqueror becomes the master and King of England, and founds the present dynasty of Great Britain. It will thus be seen that the Northmen were at the height of their power and activity when they discovered and colonized portions of the Western Continent in the tenth century.

The despotism of the Kings of Norway drove from the country many of the bravest, boldest and most independent of the leaders and their families. Harold Haarfagr (the Fair-haired) determined to make himself sole monarch of Norway. The ambition of one of Norway's fairest and proudest daughters stimulated his own. Enamored of Ragna Adilsdatler (the daughter of Adil), he proposed to make her his queen; but she answered that the man she married would have to be King of all Norway. He gallantly and proudly accepted this challenge of love and ambition. After twelve years' hard fighting, during which time he would neither cut nor comb the fair hair for which he was so celebrated, he succeeded in conquering all Norway and thereby in winning his queen. At the battle of Hafersfjord, in 872, he consolidated the thirty-one small republics of that Spartan country into the united Kingdom of Norway. The proud families of the former republics would not submit to the harsh and tyrannical measures of this rude and iron-clad conqueror. Many of the leading men and families of the country were either expelled or voluntarily expatriated themselves. Some went to the Hebrides, some to the Orkneys, and others to the Shetland and Ferroë Islands. Iceland, which had been discovered by the famous Norse Viking Naddod, in 860, became a favorite asylum of most of these bold and unconquered refugees, on account of its remoteness and consequent security. Thus Iceland became a colony of Norway, and ultimately a dependence of the mother country. Among the voluntary exiles from Norway who settled in Iceland was Gunnbjorn, Ulf Krage's Son, a bold rover of the sea, who, in 876, was driven out to sea in a tempest, and discovered the white cliffs far to the west of Iceland, and bordering the eastern coast of Greenland. They received the name of Gunnbjorn's Rocks. Similar reports were heard from time to time from other mariners, and the imagination of these bold sea kings heightened the romance of the discovery. "Sailors' yarns" of great and marvellous details were spread and became traditional. One of these dread adventurers, Hollow Geit, claimed that he had gone thither over the ices with an Icelandic she-goat, had seen gigantic oaks covered with acorns

as large as men, and rocks of ice that shivered the ships in their

passage.

Among the Northmen who went into exile from Norway was Thorwald, son of Oswald and grandson of Ulvi. His son Eric the Red had taken part in some disturbances in Norway, and was probably compelled to fly from punishment, for he had killed his man. Thus Norwald and his son Eric went together and settled in Iceland, and founded the settlement of Hornstrand. After the death of his father, another manslaughter by Eric caused him to feel the necessity for another emigration, for he was now condemned to another exile, and as he had heard so much of Gunnbjorn's Rocks, he determind to go in search of them and of the country foreshadowed by them as probably being not far distant. Accordingly in the spring of 984, he fitted out his ship and sailed in the direction given for Gunnbjorn's Rocks. He was accompanied by another prominent Icelander, Heriulf Bardson, a man of wealth and influence. He passed the famous Rocks and discovered the eastern shores of that vast body of land now known as Greenland. The land was found in the 64th degree of latitude. He landed and gave the name of Midjokel to the place, which means mountain in the midst of ice. He saw masses of rocks and ice commingled; and as the ices descended to the sea they became united to the already vast icebergs, and presented to the eye barriers at once fearful and grandly beautiful.

Eric faltered not, but pressed his brave ship southward, doubled Cape Farewell, and with his mind teeming with visions of fame and colonization, settled at the fiôrd Igalikko, which he called Eric's ford. He erected a vast building at Brattahlida, availing himself of the rock palisade for one of its walls, and here with his colony he established himself. When Jorgensen in more recent times discovered the ruins of this vast pile, they seemed like the remnants of a town and showed evidences of immense toil in its construction. Eric's voyage westward from Iceland had awakened great hopes among the Icelanders, ever ready by their national tastes and habits to seek adventure, for Eric had promised to seek a land that was, unlike Gunnbjorn's Rocks, suitable for human habitation. Eric, on his part, was as skilful in schemes of colonization as many of our own contemporaries. He said to himself, if this country has a fine and attractive name, it will draw the unwary adventurer and colonist hither. So he called this bleak and iceclad land by a name more suited to Florida. It was he that bestowed upon it the suggestive name of Greenland. He spent the winter at Ericseya, and it was in the following year, 985, that he settled at Brattahlida, after having spent the summer in exploring the western coast and in giving names to many places. In the