kind of Hero; that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice,

delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places;--in short that
_he_ too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They

feel withal that, if _persiflage_ be the great thing, there never was such
a _persifleur_. He is the realized ideal of every one of them; the thing

they are all wanting to be; of all Frenchmen the most French. He is
properly their god,--such god as they are fit for. Accordingly all

persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis,
do they not worship him? People of quality disguise themselves as

tavern-waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his
Postilion, "_Va bon train_; thou art driving M. de Voltaire." At Paris his

carriage is "the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets." The
ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic.

There was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, that did
not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler.

Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from the divine Founder of
Christianity to the withered Pontiff of Encyclopedism, in all times and

places, the Hero has been worshipped. It will ever be so. We all love
great men; love, venerate and bow down submissive before great men: nay

can we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not every true man
feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really

above him? No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. And
to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical logic, or general

triviality, insincerity and aridity of any Time and its influences can
destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. In times of

unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolution, much down-rushing,
sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to everybody. For myself in these

days, I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the
everlasting adamant lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary

things cannot fall. The confused wreck of things crumbling and even
crashing and tumbling all round us in these revolutionary ages, will get

down so far; _no_ farther. It is an eternal corner-stone, from which they
can begin to build themselves up again. That man, in some sense or other,

worships Heroes; that we all of us reverence and must ever reverence Great
Men: this is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings-down

whatsoever;--the one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise
as if bottomless and shoreless.

So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of
it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still

divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still
worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan

religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth. I think
Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. It

is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till
the eleventh century: eight hundred years ago the Norwegians were still

worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers;
the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still

resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that, while we
believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse creed, for

many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is another point
of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been

preserved so well.
In that strange island Iceland,--burst up, the geologists say, by fire from

the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava; swallowed many
months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in

summertime; towering up there, stern and grim, in the North Ocean with its
snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and horridvolcanic chasms,

like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;--where of all places
we least looked for Literature or written memorials, the record of these

things was written down. On the seabord of this wild land is a rim of
grassy country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them and of

what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, men who had
deep thoughts in them, and uttered musically their thoughts. Much would be

lost, had Iceland not been burst up from the sea, not been discovered by
the Northmen! The old Norse Poets were many of them natives of Iceland.

Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a
lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain of their old Pagan

songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--Poems or Chants of a mythic,
prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse critics

call the _Elder_ or Poetic _Edda_. _Edda_, a word of uncertain etymology,
is thought to signify _Ancestress_. Snorro Sturleson, an Iceland

gentleman, an extremelynotablepersonage, educated by this Saemund's
grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put together,

among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole
Mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse. A work

constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call
unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading

still: this is the _Younger_ or Prose _Edda_. By these and the numerous
other _Sagas_, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not,

which go on zealously in the North to this day, it is possible to gain some
direct insight even yet; and see that old Norse system of Belief, as it

were, face to face. Let us forget that it is erroneous Religion; let us
look at it as old Thought, and try if we cannot sympathize with it

somewhat.
The primarycharacteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to be

Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature. Earnest simple
recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly

miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they
wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as Religion The dark hostile

Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as "_Jotuns_," Giants, huge
shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, Fire, Sea-tempest; these are

Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The
empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in

perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of
the Asen, or Divinities; Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the

home of the Jotuns.
Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the foundation

of it! The power of _Fire_, or _Flame_, for instance, which we designate
by some trivialchemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential

character of wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with these old
Northmen, Loke, a most swift subtle _Demon_, of the brood of the Jotuns.

The savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say some Spanish voyagers) thought
Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you

sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. From us too no
Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a

wonder. What _is_ Flame?--_Frost_ the old Norse Seer discerns to be a
monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant _Thrym_, _Hrym_; or _Rime_, the old word

now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost.
_Rime_ was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or

Devil; the monstrous Jotun _Rime_ drove home his Horses at night, sat
"combing their manes,"--which Horses were _Hail-Clouds_, or fleet

_Frost-Winds_. His Cows--No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's
Cows are _Icebergs_: this Hymir "looks at the rocks" with his devil-eye,

and they _split_ in the glance of it.
Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the God

Donner (Thunder) or Thor,--God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder
was his wrath: the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of

Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rending
Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his loud chariot over the

mountain-tops,--that is the peal; wrathful he "blows in his red
beard,"--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begins.

Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom
the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun,

beautifullest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine still, after all
our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell

of is one of whom Grimm the German Etymologist finds trace: the God
_Wunsch_, or Wish. The God _Wish_; who could give us all that we _wished_!

Is not this the sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of man? The
_rudest_ ideal that man ever formed; which still shows itself in the latest

forms of our spiritualculture. Higher considerations have to teach us
that the God _Wish_ is not the true God.

Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for etymology's sake, that
Sea-tempest is the Jotun _Aegir_, a very dangerous Jotun;--and now to this

day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, when the