the early
church, still lurk in the pastimes of our rural districts:--the new
science of which we have spoken, by taking cognisance of these and all
other existing sources of legitimate investigation, will settle the
source and affinities of nations upon a plan as much superior to that of
Grotius and his school as fact and reason exceed the guess-work of the
theorist and the historian. Meantime we would cite a few examples that
illustrate and bear more particularly on the subject to which our
inquiries have been directed.

Nothing seems at first sight more difficult than to establish a
community of origin between the gods of Olympus and those of the
Scandinavian mythology. The attempt has often been made, and each time
with increased success. Observe the process adopted in this interesting
inquiry.

"Every country in Europe has invested its popular fictions with the
same common marvels--all acknowledge the agency of the lifeless
productions of nature; the intervention of the same supernatural
machinery; the existence of elves, fairies, dwarfs, giants, witches, and
enchanters; the use of spells, charms, and amulets, and all those
highly-gifted objects, of whatever form or name, whose attributes refute
every principle of human experience, which are to conceal the
possessor's person, annihilate the bounds of space, or command a
gratification of all our wishes. These are the constantly-recurring
types which embellish the popular tale: which have been transferred to
the more laboured pages of romance; and which, far from owing their
first appearance in Europe to the Arabic conquest of Spain, or the
migrations of Odin to Scandinavia, are known to have been current on its
eastern verge long anterior to the era of legitimate history. The
Nereids of antiquity, the daughters of the 'sea-born seer,' are
evidently the same with the mermaids of the British and northern shores.
The inhabitants of both are fixed in crystal caves or coral palaces
beneath the waters of the ocean; they are alike distinguished for their
partialities to the human race, and their prophetic powers in disclosing
the events of futurity. The Naiads differ only in name from the Nixen of
Germany and Scandinavia (Nisser), or the water-elves of our countrymen.
AElfric and the Nornae, who wove the web of life, and sang the fortunes of
the illustrious Helga, are but the same companions who attended Ilithyia
at the births of Iamos and Hercules," the venerable Parcae