Would we know the soul of a people, let us seek it in their religion, the unseen spiritual fountain whence flow all their outward acts. In the beginning, we are told, were two worlds,— Niflheim, the frozen, and Muspel the burning. From the falling snow-flakes, quickened by the Unknown who sent the heated blast, was born Ymer the giant:

'When Ymer lived

Was sand, nor sea,
Nor cooling wave;

No earth was found
Nor heaven above;
One chaos all,

And nowhere grass.'

Fallen asleep, from his arm-pits spring the frost-giants. A cow, born also of melting snow, feeds him with four milk-rivers. Whilst licking his perspiration from the rocks, there came at evening out of the stones a man's hair, the second day a man's head, and the third all the man was there. His name was Bure. His grandsons, Odin, Vile, and Ve, kill the giant Ymer. Dragging his body to the abyss of space, they form of it the visible universe; from his flesh, the land; from his bones, the mountains; from his hair, the forests; from his teeth and jaws, the stones and pebbles; from his blood, the ocean, in the midst of which they fix the earth; from his skull, the vaulted sky, raised and supported by a dwarf under each corner,-Austre, Westre, Nordre, and Sudre, from his brains, scattered in the air, the melancholy clouds; from his hair, trees and plants; from his eyebrows, a wall of defense against the giants. The flying sparks and red-hot flakes cast out of Muspel they placed in the heavens, and said: 'Let there be light.' Far in the North sits a giant, 'the corpse swallower,' clad with eagles' plumes. When he spreads his wings for flight, the winds, which yet no mortal can discern, fan fire into flame, or lash the waves into foam. As the sons of Bor, 'powerful and fair,' were walking along the sea-beach, they found two trees, stately and graceful, and from them created the first human pair, man and woman,-Ask and Embla:

Odin gave spirit,
Hæner gave mind,
Loder gave blood
And lovely hue.'

Nobler conception is this, than the Greek and Hebrew of clod or

stone. Diviner symbol is this of the trees, Ash and Elm, which, as they grow heavenward, show an unconscious attraction to that which is heavenly.

From the mould of Ymer are bred, as worms, the dwarfs, who by command of the gods receive human form and sense. Among the rocks, in the wild mountain-gorges they dwell. When we hear the echo from wood or hill or dale, there stands a dwarf who repeats our words. They had charge of the gold and precious minerals. With their aprons on, they hammered and smelted, and

'Rock crystals from sand and hard flint they made,
Which, tinged with the rosebud's dye,

They cast into rubies and carbuncles red,

And hid them in cracks hard by.'

In the summer's sun, when the mist hangs over the sea, may be seen, sitting on the surface of the water, the mermaid, combing her long golden hair with golden comb, or driving her snowwhite cattle to the strands. No household prospers without its domestic spirit. Oft the favored maid finds in the morning that her kitchen is swept and the water brought. The buried treasure has its sleepless dragon, and the rivulet its water-sprite. The Swede delights to tell of the boy of the stream, who haunts the glassy brooks that steal through meadows green, and sits on the silver waves at moonlight, playing his harp to the elves who dance on the flowery margin.

We retain in the days of the week a compendium of the old English creed. A son and a daughter, lovely and graceful, are appointed by the Powers to journey round heaven each day with chariot and steeds, 'to count years for men,' each ever pursued by a ravenous wolf. The girl is Sol, the Sun, with meteor eyes and burning plumes; the boy is Maane, the Moon, with white fire laden. The festival-days consecrated to them were hence known as Sun's-daeg and Moon's-daeg, whence our Sunday and Monday. Reversing the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, the Teutons worshipped the sun as a female and the moon as a male deity, from an odd notion that if the latter were addressed as a goddess their wives would be their masters. The memory of Tyr, the dark, dread, daring, and intrepid one, is embalmed in Tuesday; his grandmother was an ugly giantess with nine hundred heads. Wodin, or Odin, survives in Wednesday. He does

not create the world, but arranges and governs it. He is the allpervading spirit, the infinite wanderer. Two wolves lie at his feet; and on his shoulders sit two gifted ravens, which fly, on his behests, to the uttermost regions. He wakes the soul to thought, gives science and lore, inspires the song of the bard and the incantation of the sorcerer, blunts the point of the javelin, renders his warriors invisible; with a hero's heart and voice, tells the brave how by valor a man may become a god; explains to mortals their destiny here,- makes existence articulate and melodious. Incarnated as a seer and magician unknown thousands of years ago, he led the Teutonic throng into Scandinavia, across seas and rivers in a wonderful ship built by dwarfs, so marvellously constructed that, when they wished to land, it could be taken to pieces, rolled up, and put in the pocket. Our Thursday is Thor's day, son of Odin. He is a spring-god, subduing the frostgiants. The thunder is his wrath. The gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of his angry brows. The bursting firebolt is the all-rending hammer flung from his hand. The peal,that is the roll of his chariot over the mountain-tops. In his mansion are five hundred and forty halls. Freyja, the Venus of the North, in whom are beauty, grace, gentleness, the longings, joys, and tears of love, is incarnated in Friday. Sæter, an obscure water-deity, represented as standing upon a fish, with a bucket in his hand, is commemorated in Saturday. But beyond all the gods who are known and named, there is the feeling, the instinct, the presentiment of One who is unseen and imperishable, the everlasting Adamant lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall:

"Then comes another

Yet more mighty,

But Ilim dare I not

Venture to name;

Few look further forward

Than to the time

When Odin goes

To meet the wolf."

Is not the last and highest consecration of all true religion an altar to 'The Unknown God?'

All things exist in antagonism. No sooner are the giants created than the contest for empire begins. When Ymer is killed, the crimson flood drowns all save one, who with his wife escapes

in a chest, and so continues the hated race. Huge, shaggy, demoniac beings. Jotunheim is their home, distant, dark, chaotic. Long fight the gods against them,—the Fenriswolf, whose jaws they rend asunder; the great serpent, whom they drown in the sea; the evil Loke, whom they bind to the rocks, beneath a viper whose venom drops unceasingly on his face.

That which is born must die. Hel-gate stands ever ajar to receive the child with rosy cheeks, as him of the hoary locks and faltering step. When a great man dies,- his body, with his sword in his hand, his helmet on his head, his shield by his side, and his horse under him, is burned. The ashes are collected in an earthen vessel, which is then surrounded with huge stones; and over this is heaped the memorial mound. Brynhild, an untamed maiden in an epic of these Northern races, sets her love upon Sigurd; but, seeing him married, she causes his death, laughs once, puts on her golden corselet, pierces herself, and makes this last request:

Let in the plain be raised a pile so spacious, that for us all like room may be; let them burn the Hun (Sigurd) on the one side of me, on the other side my household slaves, with collars splendid, two at our heads and two hawks; let also lie between us both the keenedged sword; . . . also five female thralls, eight male slaves of gentle birth fostered with

me."

Is it not a beautiful thought that the dead in the mounds are in a state of consciousness? Out of the depths seems to come the half-dumb stifled voice of the long-buried generations of our fathers, the echo in some sort of our own painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder:

'Now, children, lay us in two lofty graves

Down by the sea shore, near the deep-blue waves:
Their sounds shall to our souls be music sweet,

Singing our dirge as on the strand they beat.

When round the hills the pale moonlight is thrown,

And Midnight dews fall on the Bauta-stone,

We'll sit, O Thorsten, in our rounded graves

And speak together o'er the gentle waves.'

When the daughter weeps for the death of her father, she allows no tear to fall on his corpse, lest his peace be troubled:

"Whenever thou grievest,
My coffin is within

As livid blood;

Whenever thon rejoicest,

My coffin is within

Filled with fragrant roses.'

Even the gods must perish. Have we not seen that the germ of decay was in them from the beginning? They and their enemies, met in a world-embracing struggle, mutually destroy each other. Sun and stars, rock-built earth and crystal vault, sink into the bottomless, many-sounding sea.

But the end is also the beginning. There comes a new day, and a new heaven without rent or seam,- that is, the regeneration. There is no loss of souls, no more than of drops when the ocean yields its vapor to the touch of the summer's sun. Thought and affection are immortal. Death is but a vanishing from one realm into another-a triumph-hour of entrance through an arch of shadow into eternal day. Therefore, fall gloriously in battle, and you shall be at once transported to Valhal, the airy hall of Odin, upborne by spears, roofed with shields, and adorned with coats of mail. Fighting and feasting, which have been your fierce joys on earth, shall be lavished upon you in this supernal abode. Every day you shall have combats in the listed field,— the rush of steeds, the flash of swords, the shining of lances, and all the maddening din of conflict; helmets and bucklers riven, horses and riders overthrown, ghastly wounds exchanged: but at the setting of the sun you shall meet unscathed, victors and vanquished, around the festive board, to partake of the ample banquet and quaff full horns of beer and fragrant mead. Ragnar Lodbrok, shipwrecked on the English coast, is taken prisoner. Refusing to speak, he is thrown into a dungeon full of serpents, there to remain until he tells his name. The reptiles are powerless. The spectators say he must be a brave man indeed whom neither arms nor vipers can hurt. King Ælla, hearing this, orders his enchanted garment to be stripped off, and soon the serpents cling to him on all sides. Then Ragnar says, 'How the young cubs would roar if they knew what the old boar suffers!' But his eye is fixed upon Valhal's 'wide-flung door,' and he glories that no sigh shall disgrace his exit:

'Cease my strain! I hear a voice

From realms where martial souls rejoice;

I hear the maids of slaughter call,
Who bid me hence to Odin's hall;
High-seated in their blest abodes,
I soon shall quaff the drink of gods.

The Valkyries, Odin's maids, who are sent out to choose the fallen heroes, and to sway the combat.