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themselves, than from the illustration they throw on the origin and progress of the various nations
that compose this great family of mankind. In the sacred books of the Icelandic Scalds, which record
the mythological lore of northern heathenism, we may find no consistent or satisfactory system of
doctrine, but many speculations, that must be regarded as most ingenious and profound, when we
consider the age and circumstances in which they were produced; and we trace uumistakeably the germs
of the later Teutonic poetry, the dawnings of that intellect which expanded into the radiance of so bright
a day in England under Elizabeth, in Germany almost within our own generation. From the same
authorities we derive the only full and credible account of the religious belief of our own Pagan ancestors,
those wild worshippers of Odin, who poured into Britain, dispossessed its Celtic population, and occupied
its fair domain; where their descendants were to build up an empire bearing sway over the East and
the West, to give laws to distant people and unexplored continents. For in the wide extent of
Scandinavia Proper, on the coasts of the North Sea and the islands of the Baltic, not less than in the
forests of north Germany and Jutland, we must seek for the incunabula gentis Anglicæ [1]. Again, in the
venerable precepts of the Scandinavian legislators, we find the best comments on the principles of our
own jurisprudence; for on this foundation has been reared the vast fabric of English law. In like
mode, their social and military institutes, their habits and manners, elucidate those of the so-called
Anglo-Saxons, and are identical with those of the Danes (so our old writers term them) whose
marauding hosts afterwards came to reinforce their numbers and dispute their heritage; and with those
of the Normans, who wrested from the crown of France some of its noblest provinces, and would not be
satisfied until they had established their power among their insular kinsmen, by the armed bands of the
Conqueror and his followers. In the primitive forms of the Gothic monarchy, when the king speaks to
the assembly of the armed people, or the estates confer with each other at the diet, we discover the
sources from which the usages of the modern constitution of England, familiar to us in its daily workings,
have sprung. And even in the Sweden of the present day, we see perhaps a picture not unlike what
England might have presented, had not the progress of the Anglo-Saxons been arrested, and their
peculiar civilization disturbed, by the admixture of foreign elements. For while Scandinavia has sent
forth in ancient days hosts of emigrants and conquerors, she herself has never received a foreign yoke.
The basis of society there is the “allodial right of property acquired by labour, for Swedish soil was
never won by conquest. Even the old legend of the immigration of Odin and the Asae, speaks of
peaceful colonization, not of forcible subjection. War has certainly had but too great an influence on
the Swedish cultivator, but the law of arms has never divided his land, nor made him a labourer under
foreign dominion [2].” During the middle age also, the Swedes, unlike the Germans, clung to the
traditions and habitudes of their ancestral freedom, and refused to surrender their liberties into the
keeping of princes and nobles; and hence the institutions of this cognate people, like our own, though
under very different conditions, reached their natural development in a free polity. Even as the seed
sown in autumn,—“beautiful type of a higher hope,”—survives the storms of winter, its vitality covered,
but not extinguished, by the snow.
In this view—and perusal of the following pages will show that it is neither forced nor exaggerated—it
would be difficult to point out any country which has more solid or legitimate claims on the attention
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