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Chap. XVI.
MUSEUM: AGE OF STONE.
233
not,” continued he, “ I always treat them with courtesy,
and show myself pleased with the desire they evince to
be of service; were I to act otherwise to the man who
offers me a trifle, the same man, should he at any future
time discover an object of value, would not trouble
himself to bring it to me.”
The Pagan Division of the Collection of Northern
Antiquities is classed under three heads :*—
The Age of Stone.
The Age of Bronze.
The Age of Iron.
1. The Age of Stone.—To the age of Stone the
three first rooms are devoted. The date of this period
is apocryphal, and to my inquiries on the point
Professor Thomsen replied, “We know nothing, so it is
useless to speak on the subject.”
In earlier days, before the attention of antiquaries
was directed to these matters, all objects in stone were
accounted as holy relics of bygone’ ages. The wedges
are even now called by the peasants “ Tordenkile,”—
thunder-wedges; and as early as the Bronze age, among
the stores of a necromancer dug up, together with “ eye
of newt and tongue of frog,” rats’ tails, and other
devilries fitted for the caldron of Macbeth’s witches,
was found an arrow-head of flint, enveloped in a leather
case, evidently intended to be worn as an amulet round
the neck. In Italy the same articles have been
discovered, encased in gold, to be worn in similar fashion,
as I have mentioned in my account of the Thorvaldsen
Museum. In England also such objects are looked
* There exists no catalogue of this collection.
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