ts that the sceptic can
only become religious by living as if he _were_ religious--by stupefying
himself, as Pascal plainly puts it, with holy water--so it is to be
feared that there is but a single way of winning over the general reader
to the Sagas. Preaching and example, as in this brief essay, will not
avail with him. He must take Pascal's advice, and live for an hour or
two as if he were a lover of Sagas. He must, in brief, give that old
literature a fair chance. He has now his opportunity: Mr. William Morris
and Mr. Eirikr Magnusson are publishing a series of cheap
translations--cheap only in coin of the realm--a _Saga Library_. If a
general reader tries the first tale in the first volume, story of "Howard
the Halt,"--if he tries it honestly, and still can make no way with it,
then let him take comfort in the doctrine of Invincible Ignorance. Let
him go back to his favourite literature of gossiping reminiscence, or of
realistic novels. We have all, probably, a drop of the Northmen's blood
in us, but in that general reader the blood is dormant.

What is a Saga? It is neither quite a piece of history nor wholly a
romance. It is a very old story of things and adventures that really
happened, but happened so long ago, and in times so superstitious, that
marvels and miracles found their way into the legend. The best Sagas are
those of Iceland, and those, in translations, are the finest reading that
the natural man can desire. If you want true pictures of life and
character, which are always the same at bottom, or true pictures of
manners, which are always changing, and of strange customs and lost
beliefs, in the Sagas they are to be found. Or if you like tales of
enterprise, of fighting by land and sea, fighting with men and beasts,
with storms and ghosts and fiends, the Sagas are full of this
entertainment.

The stories of which we are speaking were first told in Iceland, perhaps
from 950 to 1100 B.C. When Norway and Sweden were still heathen, a
thousand years ago, they were possessed by families of noble birth,
owning no master, and often at war with each other, when the men were not
sailing the seas, to rob and kill in Scotland, England, France, Italy,
and away east as far as Constantinople, or farther. Though they were
wild sea robbers and warriors, they were sturdy farmers, great
shipbuilders; every man of them, however wealthy, could be his own
carpenter, smith, shipwright, and ploughman. They for