avage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the
Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility
of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power of
that Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse heart
has been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the best
illustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates is
afforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middle
centuries? No one can read the accounts which such travellers as Sir
George Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peaceful
disposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectual
cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a
grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our
race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst
elements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed its
work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has
caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into
an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded the
introduction of the Gospel. Trial by combat was abolished in 1001, and
the penalty of the imaginary crime of witchcraft was blotted from the
statutes of the island nearly half a century before it ceased to disgrace
those of Great Britain. So entire has been the change wrought in the
sanguinary and cruel Norse character that at the present day no Icelander
can be found who, for any reward, will undertake the office of
executioner. The scalds, who went forth to battle, cleaving the skulls
of their enemies with the same skilful hands which struck the harp at the
feast, have given place to Christian bards and teachers, who, like
Thorlakson, whom Dr. Henderson found toiling cheerfully with his beloved
parishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine with
the vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warm
and genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities of
a high civilization.

But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to
introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and
vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and
other rhymed sagas of