grand contriver of deceit and frauds, the reproach of gods and men. He is beautiful in his figure, but his mind is evil, and his inclinations inconstant. Nobody renders him divine. honours. He surpasses all mortals in the arts of perfidy and craft." He has had many children, besides three monsters, who owe their birth to him; the wolf Fenrir, the Midgard serpent, and Hela or Death. All three are enemies to the gods, who after various struggles have chained this wolf till the last day, when he shall break loose and rush against them. The serpent has been cast into the sea, where he shall remain till he is conquered by the God Thor. And Hela or Death has been banished into the lower regions, where she has the government of nine worlds, into which she distributes those who are sent to her. We find here and there in the Edda several other strokes concerning Loki, his stratagems against the gods, their resentment, and the vengeance they took of him, when he was seized and shut up in a cavern formed of three keen-edged stones, where he rages with such violence that he causes all the earthquakes that happen. He will remain there captive, adds the same mythology, till the end of the ages; but then he shall be slain by Heimdall, the door-keeper of the gods.

We have seen above that the Icelandic mythology reckons up twelve goddesses, including Frigga, the spouse of Odin, and the chief of them all. Their names and respective functions will be found specified in the prose Edda, c. 35. Besides these twelve goddesses there are numerous virgins in Valhalla, or the paradise of the heroes. Their business is to wait upon them, and they are called Valkyrior. Odin also employs them to choose in battles those who are to perish, and to make the victory incline to whatever side he pleases. The court of the gods is ordinarily kept under a great ash tree, and there they distribute justice*. This ash is the greatest of all trees; its branches cover the surface of the earth, its top reaches to the highest heaven, it is supported by three vast roots, one of which extends to the ninth world. An eagle, whose piercing eye discovers all things, perches upon its branches. A squirrel is continually running up and down it to bring news; while a parcel of serpents, fastened to the

*See the Edda, c. 15.

trunk, endeavour to destroy him. From under one of the roots runs a fountain wherein Wisdom lies concealed. From a neighbouring spring (the fountain of past things) three virgins are continually drawing a precious water, with which they water the ash tree: this water keeps up the beauty of its foliage, and after having refreshed its leaves, falls back again to the earth, where it forms the dew of which the bees make their honey. These three virgins always keep under the ash; and it is they who dispense the days and ages of men. Every man hath a destiny appropriated to himself, who determines the duration and events of his life. But the three destinies of more especial note are Urd (the past), Verdandi (the present), and Skuld (the future).

Such were the principal deities, formerly worshipped in the north of Europe; or rather these were the ideas which the poets gave of them to the credulous people. It is easy to discover their handywork in these fictions, sometimes ingenious, but more frequently puerile, with which they thought to set off the simplicity of the ancient religion; and we ought not to believe that such of them as were men of sense and discernment ever considered them in any other light. But after having shown the names and attributes of their principal deities, let us proceed to set forth, after the Edda and the poem named Völuspá, the other doctrines of their religion.

We have seen that among the qualities of which they supposed Odin or the Supreme God to be possessed, that of the creator of heaven and earth is expressly attributed to him. What the Icelandic mythology has preserved to us on this head, merits so much the more attention, as it discovers to us the sentiments that prevailed at a very early period on this important point, and at the same time expresses them frequently with a greatness and sublimity equal to the finest strokes of classical antiquity on the same subject. The Völuspá begins by a description of Chaos. "In the day-spring of the ages, says the prophetess, "there was neither sea, nor shore, nor refreshing breezes. There was neither earth below, nor heaven above, to be distinguished. The whole was only one vast abyss, without herb, and without seeds. The sun had then no palace: the stars knew not their dwellingplaces, the moon was ignorant of her power." After this we are told that "there was a luminous, burning, flaming world

H

towards the south; and another, nebulous and dark, toward the north. From the latter world flowed out incessantly into the abyss that lay between the two, torrents of venom, which in proportion as they removed far away from their source, congealed in their falling into the abyss, and so filled it with scum and ice. Thus was the abyss by little and little filled quite full but there remained within it a light and immoveable air, and thence exhaled icy vapours. Then a warm breath coming from the south, melted those vapours, and formed of them living drops, whence was born the giant Ymir. It is reported that whilst he slept an extraordinary sweat under his arm-pits produced a male and female, whence is sprung the race of the giants; a race evil and corrupt, as well as Ymir their author. Another race was brought forth, which formed alliances with that of the giant Ymir: this was called the family of Bor, so named from the second of that family. who was the father of Odin. The sons of Bor slew the giant Ymir, and the blood ran from his wounds in such abundance, that it caused a general inundation, wherein perished all the giants, except only one, who saving himself in a bark, escaped with all his family. Then a new world was formed. The sons of Bor, or the gods, dragged the body of the giant in the abyss, and of it made the earth: the sea and rivers were composed of his blood; the earth of his flesh; the great mountains of his bones; the rocks of his teeth and of splinters of his bones broken. They made of his skull the vault of heaven, which is supported by four dwarfs named North, South, East, and West. They fixed there tapers to enlighten it, and assigned to other fires certain spaces which they were to run through, some of them in heaven, others under the heaven: the days were distinguished, and the years were numbered. They made the earth round, and surrounded it with the deep ocean, upon the outward banks of which they placed the giants. One day, as the sons of Bor, or the gods, were taking a walk, they found two pieces of wood floating upon the water; these they took, and out of them made a man and a woman. The eldest of the gods gave them life and souls; the second motion and knowledge; the third the gift of speech, hearing and sight, to which he added beauty and raiment. From this man and this woman, named Ask and * See the Edda, c. 6.

Embla, is descended the race of men who are permitted to inhabit the earth."

It is easy to trace out in this narration vestiges of an ancient and general tradition, of which every sect of paganism has altered, adorned or suppressed many circumstances, according to their own fancy, and which is now only to be found entire in the books of Moses. Let the strokes we have here produced be compared with the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony, with the mythology of some Asiatic nations, and with the book of Genesis, and we shall instantly be convinced that the conformity which is found between many circumstances of their recitals, cannot be the mere work of chance. Thus in the Edda the description of the Chaos; that vivifying breath which produces the giant Ymir; that sleep during which a male and female spring from his sides; that race of the sons of the gods; that deluge which only one man escapes, with his family, by means of a bark; that renewal of the world which succeeds; that first man and first woman created by the gods, and who receive from them life and motion: all this seems to be only remains of a more ancient and more general belief, which was carried into the north, and altered there more slowly than in other countries. One may discover also in the very nature of these alterations the same spirit of allegory, the same desire of accounting for all the phenomena of nature by fictions, which has suggested to other nations the greatest part of the fables with which their theology is infected. To conclude, the style itself, in which the expressions, one while sublime, one while extravagant and gigantic, are thrown together without art, the littlenesses that accompany the most magnificent descriptions, the disorder of the narrative, the uniform turn of the phrases, confirms to all who read this work an idea of a very remote antiquity, and a mode of thinking and writing peculiar to a simple and gross people, who were unacquainted with any rules of composition, and whose vigorous imagination, despising or not knowing any rules of art, displays itself in all the liberty and energy of nature.

It was thus the world was created; or to express it in a manner more, conformable to Scandinavian notions, it was thus that the matter already existing, but without order and without life, was animated and disposed by the gods in the

present state in which we behold it. I have already remarked, that they were far from supposing that after it had received the first motion from the hands of the gods, the world continued to subsist, and to move independent of its first movers. Perhaps no religion ever attributed so much to a Divine Providence as that of the northern nations. This doctrine served them for a key, as commodious as it was universal, to unlock all the phenomena of nature without exception. The intelligences united to different bodies penetrated and moved them, and men needed not to look any farther than to them, to find the cause of everything they observed in them. Thus entire nature, animated and always moved immediately by one or more intelligent causes, was in their system nothing more than the organ or instrument of the divinity, and became a kind of book in which they thought they could read his will, inclinations, and designs. Hence that weakness formerly common to so many nations, and of which the traces still subsist in many places, that makes them regard a thousand indifferent phenomena, such as the quivering of leaves, the crackling and colour of flames, the fall of thunderbolts, the flight or singing of a bird, men's involuntary motions, their dreams and visions, the movements of the pulse, &c., as intimations which God gives to wise men, of his will. Hence came oracles, divinations, auspices, presages, and lots; in a word, all that rubbish of dark superstitions called at one time religion, at another magic, a science absurd to the eyes of reason, but suitable to the impatience and restlessness of our desires, and which only betrays the weakness of human nature, in promising to relieve it. Such, notwithstanding, was the principal consequence which the Teutonic nations drew from the doctrine of a Divine Providence. The ancient Scandinavians carried it to as extravagant a pitch as the rest, as will appear from what I shall say of their sacrifices and presages, when I come to treat of their exterior worship. With respect to the moral precepts, we know very well that it has ever been the failing of mankind to regard these as the least essential part of religion. When they admitted that continual and immediate action of the Divinity on all creatures, the Scandinavians had thence concluded that it was impossible for men to effect any change in the course of things, or to resist the destinies. The Stoics