as not then as now
a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil; the monstrous Jotun
_Rime_ drove home his Horses at night, sat "combing their manes,"--which
Horses were _Hail-Clouds_, or fleet _Frost-Winds_. His Cows--No, not
his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are _Icebergs_: this Hymir
"looks at the rocks" with his devil-eye, and they _split_ in the glance
of it.

Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the
God Donner (Thunder) or Thor,--God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The
thunder was his wrath: the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing
down of Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is
the all-rending Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his loud
chariot over the mountain-tops,--that is the peal; wrathful he "blows
in his red beard,"--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder
begins. Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and
benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble
Christ), is the Sun, beautifullest of visible things; wondrous too, and
divine still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps
the notablest god we hear tell of is one of whom Grimm the German
Etymologist finds trace: the God _Wunsch_, or Wish. The God _Wish_; who
could give us all that we _wished_! Is not this the sincerest and yet
rudest voice of the spirit of man? The _rudest_ ideal that man ever
formed; which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual
culture. Higher considerations have to teach us that the God _Wish_ is
not the true God.

Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for etymology's sake,
that Sea-tempest is the Jotun _Aegir_, a very dangerous Jotun;--and now
to this day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen,
when the River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or
eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; they cry
out, "Have a care, there is the _Eager_ coming!" Curious; that word
surviving, like the peak of a submerged world! The _oldest_ Nottingham
bargemen had believed in the God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in
good part is Danish, Norse; or rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and
Saxon have no distinction, except a superficial one,--as of Heathen and
Christian, or the like. But all over our Island we are mingled largely
with Danes proper,--from the incessant invasions there were: and this,
of course, in a greater pr