t ages hostile. The
individual freedom of the North has been equivalent to barbarism, and from
time to time has rolled down a destroying deluge over the South, almost
sweeping away its civilization, and overwhelming in a common ruin arts,
literature, and laws. On the other hand, civilization at the South has
passed into luxury, has produced effeminacy, till individual freedom has
been lost under grinding despotism. But in modern civilization a third
element has been added, which has brought these two powers of Northern
freedom and Southern culture into equipoise and harmony. This new element
is Christianity, which develops, at the same time, the sense of personal
responsibility, by teaching the individual destiny and worth of every
soul, and also the mutual dependence and interlacing brotherhood of all
human society. This Christian element in modern civilization saves it from
the double danger of a relapse into barbarism on the one hand, and a too
refined luxury on the other. The nations of Europe, to-day, which are the
most advanced in civilization, literature, and art, are also the most
deeply pervaded with the love of freedom; and the most civilized nations
on the globe, instead of being the most effeminate, are also the most
powerful.

The Scandinavian people, destined to play so important a part in the
history of the world, were, as we have said, a branch of the great
Indo-European variety. We have seen that modern ethnology teaches that all
the races which inhabit Europe, with some trifling exceptions, belong to
one family, which originated in Central Asia. This has appeared and is
proved by means of glossology, or the science of language. The closest
resemblance exists between the seven linguistic families of Hindostan,
Persia, Greece, Rome, Germany, the Kelts, and the Slavi; and it is a most
striking fact of human history, that from the earliest period of recorded
time down to the present day a powerful people, speaking a language
belonging to one or other of these races, should have in a great measure
swayed the destinies of the world.

Before the birth of Christ the peninsula of Denmark was called by the
Romans the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Cimbric peninsula. This name came from
the Cimbri, a people who, one hundred and eleven years before Christ,
almost overthrew the Roman Republic, exciting more terror than any event
since the days of Hannibal. More than three hundred thousand men, issuing
from the peninsula