off
from the rest of the world by stormy seas, the people could there unfold
their ideas, and become themselves. It is therefore to Scandinavia that we
must go to study the German religion, and to find the influence exercised
on modern civilization and the present character of Europe. This influence
has been freely acknowledged by great historians.

Montesquieu says:[324]--

"The great prerogative of Scandinavia is, that it afforded the great
resource to the liberty of Europe, that is, to almost all of liberty
there is among men. The Goth Jornandes calls the North of Europe the
forge of mankind. I would rather call it the forge of those instruments
which broke the fetters manufactured in the South."

Geijer, in his Swedish History, tells us:--

"The recollections which Scandinavia has to add to those of the
Germanic race are yet the most antique in character and comparatively
the most original. They offer the completest remaining example of a
social state existing previously to the reception of influences from
Rome, and in duration stretching onward so as to come within the sphere
of historical light."

We do not know how much of those old Northern ideas may be still mingled
with our ways of thought. The names of their gods we retain in those of
our weekdays,--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Their popular
assemblies, or Things, were the origin of our Parliament, our Congress,
and our general assemblies. If from the South came the romantic admiration
of woman, from the North came a better respect for her rights and the
sense of her equality. Our trial by jury was immediately derived from
Scandinavia; and, according to Montesquieu, as we have seen, we owe to the
North, as the greatest inheritance of all, that desire for freedom which
is so chief an element in Christian civilization.

Scandinavia proper consists of those regions now occupied by the kingdoms
of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The geographical peculiarity of this
country is its proximity everywhere to the sea, and the great extent of
its coast line. The great peninsula of Sweden and Norway, with the
Northern Ocean on its west, the Baltic and Gulf of Bothnia on its east,
penetrated everywhere by creeks, friths, and arms of the sea, surrounded
with innumerable islands, studded with lakes, and cleft with rivers, is
also unrivalled, except by Switzerland, in the sublime and picturesque
beauty of its mountains. T