amid pathless forests, bridgeless rivers, treacherous seas, inhospitable shores, the strife of frost and fire, man, as it were face to face with a beast of prey, feels profoundly that life is a battle, and, in the raging of his own moods, sees reflected the conflict of chaotic forces. Thor's far-sounding hammer, Jove's falling thunderbolt, Indra's lightning-spear, warring against the demons of the storm, till the light triumphs and the tempest rolls away, but ever returns to renew the combat,-what are they but types of the state of man, cast out of the troubled deep upon the mists of the unknown?

When the gods were unable to bind the Fenriswolf with steel or weight of mountains, because the one he snapped and the other he spurned with his heel, they put round his foot a limp band softer than silk or gossamer, and this held him: the more he struggled the stiffer it drew. So soft, so omnipotent is the ring of Fate. Balder, the good, the beautiful, the gentle, dies. All nature is searched for a remedy; but he is dead. His mother sends Hermod to seek or see him, who rides nine days and nights through a labyrinth of gloom. Arrived at the bridge with its golden roof, he is answered: 'Yes, Balder did pass here, but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far in the North.' Speeds the messenger on, leaps Hel-gate, sees Balder, and speaks with him; but Balder cannot be delivered: Fate is inexorable. The Valkyries are choosers of the fallen. Belief in Destiny is a fundamental point for this wild Teutonic soul. Perhaps it is so for all instinctive and heroic races, as for all earnest men,—a Mahomet, a Luther, a Napoleon, a Carlyle, an Emerson. The Greek, the Turk, the Arab, the Persian, accept the inevitable.

'On two days it stands not to run from thy grave,

The appointed and the unappointed day;

On the first, neither balm nor physicians can save,-
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.'

Who can write the order of the variable winds? On every mortal who enters the hall of the firmament fall snow-storms of illusions, though the gods still sit on their thrones; and he may see, what all great thinkers have seen:

We are such stuff as dreams are made of."

In heart-to-heart communion with Nature, these old Northmen seem to have seen what meditation has taught all men in all ages,

that this world is only an appearance, a mirage, a shadow hung by the primal Reality on the bosom of the void Infinite. Thor, with two chosen friends, undertakes an expedition to Giant-land. Wandering at nightfall in a trackless forest, they espy a house, whose door is the whole breadth of one end. Here they lodge; one large hall, altogether empty. Suddenly, at dead of night, loud noises are heard. Thor grasps his hammer, and stands at the door, prepared for fight, while his terrified companions take refuge in little closet. In the morning it turns out that the noise was merely the snoring of the giant Skrymer, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; that the house was only his mitten, thrown carelessly aside; that the door was its wrist, and the closet its thumb. Skrymer now joins the party in travel. Thor, however, suspicious of his ways, resolves to put an end to him as he slumbers beneath a large oak. Raising his hammer, he strikes a thunderbolt blow down into the giant's face, who wakes, rubs his face, and murmurs: 'Did a leaf fall?' Thor replies that they are just going to sleep, and goes to lie down under another oak. Again he strikes, as soon as Skrymer again sleeps, a more terrible blow than before; but the giant only asks: 'Did an acorn fall? How is it with you, Thor?' Thor, going hastily away, says that he has prematurely waked up. His third stroke, delivered with both hands, seems to dint deep into the giant's skull; but he simply checks his snore, strokes his chin, and inquires: 'Are there sparrows roosting in this tree? Was it moss they dropped? It seems to me time to arise and dress.' At Utgard-castle, their journey's end, they are invited to share in the games going on. To Thor, they hand a drinking-horn, explaining that it is a common feat to drain it at one draught,-none so wretched as not to exhaust it at the third. Long and fiercely, three times over, with increasing anger, he drinks; then finding that he has made hardly any impression, gives it back to the cup-bearer. 'Poor, weak child!' they say: 'Can you lift this gray cat? Our young men think it nothing but play.' Thor, with his whole godlike strength, can at the utmost bend the creature's back and lift one foot. Just as we expected,' say the Utgard people. The cat is large, but you are little.' 'Little as you call me,' says Thor, ‘I challenge any one to wrestle with me, for now I am angry.' 'Why here is a toothless old woman who will wrestle you!' Heartily

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, but you will do well to carry more with you.'

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.

36. If bones bitten are, 4 shillings shall be paid.

39. If an ear be cut off, 12 shillings shall be paid.

44. If an eye be gouged out, 50 shillings shall be paid.

55. For every nail, 1 shilling.

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: