ing at once faint and hungry, he fed greedily upon it. From this
unusual and delicious repast he received so much satisfaction, that, at
his return home, he commanded honey to be served up at his table every
day. His palate, by degrees, became refined and vitiated; he began to
lose his native relish for simple fare, and contracted a habit of
indulging himself in delicacies; he ordered the delightful gardens of
his castle to be thrown open, in which the most luscious fruits had been
suffered to ripen and decay, unobserved and untouched, for many
revolving autumns, and gratified his appetite with luxurious desserts.
At length he found it expedient to introduce wine, as an agreeable
improvement, or a necessary ingredient, to his new way of living; and
having once tasted it, he was tempted, by little and little, to give a
loose to the excesses of intoxication. His general simplicity of life
was changed; he perfumed his apartments by burning the wood of the most
aromatick fir, and commanded his helmet to be ornamented with beautiful
rows of the teeth of the raindeer. Indolence and effeminacy stole upon
him by pleasing and imperceptible gradations, relaxed the sinews of his
resolution, and extinguished his thirst of military glory.

While Hacho was thus immersed in pleasure and in repose, it was reported
to him, one morning, that the preceding night, a disastrous omen had
been discovered, and that bats and hideous birds had drunk up the oil
which nourished the perpetual lamp in the temple of Odin. About the same
time, a messenger arrived to tell him, that the king of Norway had
invaded his kingdom with a formidable army. Hacho, terrified as he was
with the omen of the night, and enervated with indulgence, roused
himself from his voluptuous lethargy, and, recollecting some faint and
few sparks of veteran valour, marched forward to meet him. Both armies
joined battle in the forest where Hacho had been lost after hunting; and
it so happened, that the king of Norway challenged him to single combat,
near the place where he had tasted the honey. The Lapland chief, languid
and long disused to arms, was soon overpowered; he fell to the ground;
and before his insulting adversary struck his head from his body,
uttered this exclamation, which the Laplanders still use as an early
lesson to their children: "The vicious man should date his destruction
from the first temptation. How justly do I fall a sacrifice to sloth and
luxury, in the pl