es of green meadows, and a swift gleam of
summer; but the cold salt sea and winter close round all. The tides rise
and fall; they eddy in the sand; they float off and afar the huge
dragon-ships. But the queens pine for revenge and slaughter; the kings
drink and swear and fight, and sail away to their doom.

"Louder the war-horses growl and snarl,
Sharper the dragons bite and sting!
Eric the son of Hakon Yarl
A death-drink salt as the sea
Pledges to thee,
Olaf the King!"

Whoever has heard Ole Bull play, or Jenny Lind sing, the weird minor
melodies of the North, will comprehend the kind of spell which these
legends weave around the mind. Nor is their character lost in the
skilful and symmetrical rendering of Longfellow. The reader has not the
feeling, as in Sir William Jones's translations, that he is reading Sir
William, and not the Persian.

"'What was that?' said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck;
Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck.'
Einar, then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered, 'That was Norway breaking
From thy hand, O King!'"

But the battle which Thor had defied was not to end by the weapons of
war. In the fierce sea-fight,

"There is told a wonderful tale,
How the King stripped off his mail,
Like leaves of the brown sea-kale,
As he swam beneath the main;

"But the young grew old and gray,
And never by night or day
In his kingdom of Norroway
Was King Olaf seen again."

The victory must be won by other weapons. In the convent of Drontheim,
Astrid, the abbess, hears a voice in the darkness:--

"Cross against corslet,
Love against hatred.
Peace-cry for war-cry!"

The voice continues in peaceful music, forecasting heavenly rest:--

"As torrents in summer,
Half dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, though the
Sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;

"So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o'erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not
That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining."

With this exquisitely beautiful strain of the abbess the Saga ends.

The theologian muses aloud upon creeds and churches, then tells a
fearful tragedy of Spain,--the story of a father who betrays his
daughter to the fires of Torquemada. It chills t