ed in their
piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of
the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation,
and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized
every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting
the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the
sacred grove adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist
of this barbaric superstition are contained in the Edda, * a system of
mythology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied
by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of
their ancient traditions.

Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity of the Edda, we can easily
distinguish two persons confounded under the name of Odin; the god of
war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet
of the North, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the
people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the
invincible valor of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame
which he acquired of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had
propagated, during a long and prosperous life, he confirmed by a
voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease
and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn
assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal
places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare
the feast of heroes in the palace of the God of war.

The native and proper habitation of Odin is distinguished by the
appellation of As-gard. The happy resemblance of that name with As-burg,
or As-of, words of a similar signification, has given rise to an
historical system of so pleasing a contexture, that we could almost wish
to persuade ourselves of its truth. It is supposed that Odin was the
chief of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the Lake
Maeotis, till the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the
North with servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power
which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of
the Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in
that inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people, which, in
some remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when
his invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, shou