selves into a conflict of truth and love. It is hard to be true without hurting the feelings of others; it is hard to sympathize with others and not yield a little of our inward truth. The same antagonism is found in the religions of the world. The religions in which truth, justice, freedom, are developed tend to isolation, coldness, and hardness. On the other hand, the religions of brotherhood and human sympathy tend to weakness, luxury, and slavery.

The religion of the German races, which was the natural growth of their organization and moral character, belonged to the first class. It was a religion in which truth, justice, self-respect, courage, freedom, were the essential elements. The gods were human, as in the Hellenic system, with moral attributes. They were finite beings and limited in their powers. They carried on a warfare with hostile and destructive agents, in which at last they were to be vanquished and destroyed, though a restoration of the world and the gods would follow that destruction.

Such was the idea in all the faith of the Teutonic race. The chief virtue of man was courage, his unpardonable sin was cowardice. "To fight a good fight," this was the way to Valhalla. Odin sent his Choosers to every battlefield to select the brave dead to become his companions in the joys of heaven.

§ 3. The Eddas and their Contents.

We have observed that Iceland was settled from Norway in the ninth century. A remarkable social life grew up there, which preserved the ideas, manners, and religion of the Teutonic people in their purity for many hundred years, and whose Eddas and Sagas are the chief source of our knowledge of the race. In this ultimate and barren region of the earth, where seas of ice make thousands of square miles desolate and impenetrable, where icy masses, elsewhere glaciers, are here mountains, where volcanoes with terrible eruptions destroy whole regions of inhabited country in a few days with lava, vol

canic sand, and boiling water, was developed to its highest degree the purest form of Scandinavian life.

The religion of the Scandinavians is contained in the Eddas, which are two, the poetic, or elder Edda, consisting of thirty-seven poems, first collected and published at the end of the eleventh century; and the younger, or prose Edda, ascribed to the celebrated Snorro Sturleson, born of a distinguished Icelandic family in the twelfth century, who, after leading a turbulent and ambitious life, and being twice chosen supreme magistrate, was killed A. D. 1241. The principal part of the prose Edda is a complete synopsis of Scandinavian mythology.

The elder Edda, which is the fountain of the mythology, consists of old songs and ballads, which had come down from an immemorial past in the mouths of the people, but were first collected and committed to writing by Sæmund, a Christian priest of Iceland in the eleventh century. He was a Bard, or Scald, as well as a priest, and one of his own poems, "The Sun-Song," is in his Edda. This word "Edda" means "great-grandmother," the ancient mother of Scandinavian knowledge. Or perhaps this name was given to the legends, repeated by grandmothers to their grandchildren by the vast firesides of the old farm-houses in Iceland.

This rhythmical Edda consists of thirty-seven poems.* It is in two parts, the first containing mythical poems concerning the gods and the creation; the second, the legends of the heroes of Scandinavian history. latter portion of the Edda has the original and ancient fragments from which the German Nibelungen-lied was afterward derived. These songs are to the German poem what the ante-Homeric ballad literature of Greece about Troy and Ulysses was to the Iliad and Odyssey as reduced to unity by Homer.

The first poem in the first part of the poetic Edda is the Völuspa, or Wisdom of Vala. The Vala was a proph

* See Die Edda, von Karl Simrock. Stuttgart, 1855. Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, by William and Mary Howitt. London, 1852. Geschichte und System der Altdeutschen Religion, von Wilhelm Müller. Gottingen, 1844. Mallet's Northern Antiquities, edited by Blackwell, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library.

etess, possessing vast supernatural knowledge. Some antiquarians consider the Vala to be the same as the Nornor, or Fates. They were dark beings, whose wisdom was fearful even to the gods, resembling in this the Greek Prometheus. The Völuspa describes the universe before the creation, in the morning of time, before the great Ymir lived, when there was neither sea nor shore nor heaven. It begins thus, Vala speaking:

"I command the devout attention of all noble souls,
Of all the high and the low of the race of Heimdall;
I tell the doings of the All-Father,

In the most ancient Sagas which come to my mind.

"There was an age in which Ymir lived,

When was no sea, nor shore, nor salt waves;

No earth below, nor heaven above,

No yawning abyss and no grassy land.

"Till the sons of Börs lifted the dome of heaven,
And created the vast Midgard (earth) below;
Then the sun of the south rose above the mountains,
And green grasses made the ground verdant.

"The sun of the south, companion of the moon,
Held the horses of heaven with his right hand;
The sun knew not what its course should be,
The moon knew not what her power should be,
The stars knew not where their places were.

"Then the counsellors went into the hall of judgment,
And the all-holy gods held a council.

They gave names to the night and new moon ;
They called to the morning and to midday,

To the afternoon and evening, arranging the times."

The Völuspa goes on to describe how the gods assembled on the field of Ida, and proceeded to create metals and vegetables; after that the race of dwarfs, who preside over the powers of nature and the mineral world. Then Vala narrates how the three gods, Odin, Hönir, and Lodur, "the mighty and mild Aser," found Ask and Embla, the Adam and Eve of the Northern legends, lying without soul, sense, motion, or color. Odin gave them their souls, Hönir their intellects, Lodur their blood and colored flesh. Then comes the description of the ash-tree Yggdrasil, of the three Norns, or sisters of destiny, who tell the Aser their doom,

and the end and renewal of the world; and how, at last, one being mightier than all shall arrive:

"Then comes the mighty one to the council of the gods,
He with strength from on high who guides all things,
He decides the strife, he puts an end to struggle,

He ordains eternal laws."

In the same way, in the Song of Hyndla, another of the poems of this Edda, is a prediction of one who shall come, mightier than all the gods, and put an end to the strife between Aser and the giants. The song begins:

"Wake, maid of maidens! Awake, my friend!
Hyndla, sister, dwelling in the glens!

It is night, it is cloudy; let us ride together
To the sacred place, to Valhalla.”

Hyndla sings, after describing the heroes and princes born of the gods:

"One shall be born higher than all,

Who grows strong with the strength of the earth;

He is famed as the greatest of rulers,

United with all nations as brethren.

"But one day there shall come another mightier than he ;

But I dare not name his name.

Few are able to see beyond

The great battle of Odin and the Wolf."

Among the poems of the elder Edda is a Book of Proverbs, like those of Solomon in their sagacious observations on human life and manners. It is called the Havamal. At first we should hardly expect to find these maxims of worldly wisdom among a people whose chief business was war. But war develops cunning as well as courage, and battles are won by craft no less than by daring. Consequently, among a warlike people, sagacity is naturally cultivated.

The Havamal contains (in its proverbial section) one hundred and ten stanzas, mostly quatrains. The following are specimens:

1. "Carefully consider the end

Before you go to do anything,

For all is uncertain, when the enemy
Lies in wait in the house.

4. "The guest who enters

Needs water, a towel, and hospitality.

A kind reception secures a return
In word and in deed.

7. "The wise man, on coming in,

Is silent and observes,

Hears with his ears, looks with his eyes,

And carefully reflects on every event.

11. "No worse a companion can a man take on his journey Than drunkenness.

Not as good as many believe

Is beer to the sons of men.

The more one drinks, the less he knows,

And less power has he over himself.

26. "A foolish man, in company, had better be silent.
Until he speaks no one observes his folly.

But he who knows little does not know this,
When he had better be silent.

29. "Do not mock at the stranger

Who comes trusting in your kindness;

For when he has warmed himself at your fire,
He may easily prove a wise man.

34. "It is better to depart betimes,

And not to go too often to the same house.
Love tires and turns to sadness

When one sits too often at another man's table.

35. "One's own house, though small, is better, For there thou art the master.

It makes a man's heart bleed to ask

For a midday meal at the house of another.

36. "One's own house, though small, is better;
At home thou art the master.

Two goats and a thatched roof
Are better than begging.

38. "It is hard to find a man so rich
As to refuse a gift.

It is hard to find a man so generous
As to be always glad to lend.

42. "Is there a man whom you distrust,
And who yet can help you?

Be smooth in words and false in thought,
And pay back his deceit with cunning.

48. "I hung my garments on two scarecrows,
And, when dressed, they seemed