form than that in which it first found its
way among the ancient Scandinavians, and when at least as generally
recognized nationally as it ever was by the subjects of Haco, has failed
to put down the trade of aggressive war. It did not prevent honest,
obstinate George the Third from warring with the Americans or the
French: it only led him to enjoin a day of thanksgiving when his troops
had slaughtered a great many of the enemy, and to ordain a fast when the
enemy had slaughtered, in turn, a great many of his troops. And Haco,
who, though he preferred the lives of the saints, and even of his
ancestors, who could not have been very great saints, to the Scriptures,
seems, for a king, to have been a not undevout man in his way, and yet
appears to have had as few compunctions visitings on the score of his
Scottish war as George the Third on that of the French or the American
one. Christianity, too, ere his invasion of Scotland, had been for a
considerable time established in his dominions, and ought, were the
theory a true one, to have operated sooner. The Cathedral of St. Magnus,
when he walked round the shrine of its patron saint, was at least a
century old. The true secret of the cessation of Norwegian invasion
seems to have been the consolidation, under vigorous princes, of the
countries which had lain open to it,--a circumstance which, in the later
attempts of the invaders, led to results similar to those which broke
the heart of tough old Haco, in the bishop's palace at Kirkwall.

From the ruins I passed to the town, and spent a not uninstructive
half-hour in sauntering along the streets in the quiet of the evening,
acquainting myself with the general aspect of the people. I marked, as
one of the peculiar features of the place, groups of tidily-dressed
young women, engaged at the close-heads with their straw plait,--the
prevailing manufacture of the town,--and enjoying at the same time the
fresh air and an easy chat. The special contribution made by the lassies
of Orkney to the dress of their female neighbors all over the empire,
has led to much tasteful dressing among themselves. Orkney, on its gala,
days, is a land of ladies. What seems to be the typical countenance of
these islands unites an aquiline but not prominent nose to an oval face.
In the ordinary Scotch and English countenance, when the nose is
aquiline it is also prominent, and the face is thin and angular, as if
the additional height of the central featu