e forms of their ancestral worship; for
while the Icelanders are said to have received Christianity about
the beginning of the eleventh century, the people of Norway were
not wholly converted until somewhat later. The halls of Valhalla
must have been relinquished with a sigh in exchange for the less
intelligible joys of a tranquil and insensuous paradise. An
ancient Norsk law enjoins that the king and bishop, with all
possible care, make inquiry after those who exercise pagan
practices, employ magic arts, adore the genii of particular
places, of tombs or rivers, who transport themselves by a
diabolical mode of travelling through the air from place to
place. In the extremity of the northern peninsula (amongst
the Laplanders), where the light of science, or indeed of
civilisation, has scarcely yet penetrated, witchcraft remains as
flourishing as in the days of Odin; and the Laplanders at present
are possibly as credulous in this respect as the old Northmen or
the present tribes of Africa and the South Pacific. Before the
introduction of the new religion (it is a curious fact), the
Germans and Scandinavians, as well as the Jews, were acquainted
with the efficacy of the rite of infant baptism. A Norsk
chronicle of the twelfth century, speaking of a Norwegian
nobleman who lived in the reign of Harald Harfraga, relates that
he poured water on the head of his new-born son, and called him
Hakon, after the name of his father. Harald himself had been
baptized in the same way; and it is noted of the infant pagan St.
Olaf that his mother had him baptized as soon as he was born. The
Livonians observed the same ceremony; and a letter sent expressly
by Pope Gregory III. to St. Boniface, the great apostle of the
Germans, directs him how to act in such cases. It is probable,
Mallet conjectures, that all these people might intend by such a
rite to preserve their children from the sorceries and evil
charms which wicked spirits might employ against them at the
instant of their birth. Several nations of Asia and America have
attributed such a power to ablutions of this kind; nor were the
Romans without the custom, though they did not wholly confine it
to new-born infants. A curious magical use of an initiatory and
sacramental rite, ignorantly anticipated, it seems, by the
unilluminated faith of the pagan world.

In reviewing the characteristics of sorcery which prevailed in
the ancient world, it is obvious to compare the superstition as