perhaps may be regarded as less equivocal, than those which we have enumerated. We refer to the idioms and vocabulary of words, which are peculiar to each of these dialects. For very obvious reasons, we could enter into no discussion of these the curious reader of this article, who may wish for information upon such points, is referred to the various dictionaries which have been published of the Italian dialects, and some of which we have had occasion to mention in the progress of this article. Thastingston Driving. ART. III.-Wheaton's History of the Northmen. History of the Northmen, or Danes and Normans. London. 8vo. 1831. We are misers in knowledge as in wealth. Open inexhaustible mines to us on every hand, yet we return to grope in the exhausted stream of past opulence, and sift its sands for ore; place us in an age when history pours in upon us like an inundation, and the events of a century are crowded into a lustre ; yet we tenaciously hold on to the scanty records of foregone times, and often neglect the all-important present to discuss the possibility of the almost forgotten past. It is worthy of remark, that this passion for the antiquated and the obsolete appears to be felt with increasing force in this country. It may be asked, what sympathies can the native of a land, where every thing is in its youth and freshness, have with the antiquities of the ancient hemisphere? What inducement can he have to turn from the animated scene around him, and the brilliant perspective that breaks upon his imagination, to wander among the mouldering monuments of the olden world, and to call up its shadowy lines of kings and warriors from the dim twilight of tradition? 'Why seeks he, with unwearied toil, Through death's dark walls to urge his way, And lead oblivion into day?' We answer, that he is captivated by the powerful charm of contrast. Accustomed to a land where every thing is bursting into life, and history itself but in its dawning, antiquity has, in fact, for him the effect of novelty; and the fading, but mellow, glories of the past, which linger in the horizon of the Old World, relieve the eye, after being dazzled with the rising rays which sparkle up the firmament of the New. It is a mistake, too, that the political faith of a republican requires him, on all occasions, to declaim with bigot heat against the stately and traditional ceremonials; the storied pomps and pageants of other forms of government; or even prevents him from, at times, viewing them with interest, as matters worthy of curious investigation. Independently of the themes they present for historical and philosophical inquiry, he may regard them with a picturesque and poetical eye, as he regards the Gothic edifices rich with the elaborate ornaments of a gorgeous and intricate style of architecture, without wishing to exchange therefor the stern but proud simplicity of his own habitation; or, as he admires the romantic keeps and castles of chivalrous and feudal times, without desiring to revive the dangerous customs and warlike days in which they originated. To him the whole pageantry of emperors and kings, and nobles, and titled knights, is, as it were, a species of poetical machinery, addressing itself to his imagination, but no more affecting his faith than does the machinery of the heathen mythology affect the orthodoxy of the scholar, who delights in the strains of Homer and Virgil, and wanders with enthusiasm among the crumbling temples and sculptured deities of Greece and Rome; or do the fairy mythology of the East, and the demonology of the North, impair the Christian faith of the poet or the novelist who interweaves them in his fictions. We have been betrayed into these remarks, in considering the work before us, where we find one of our countrymen, and a thorough republican, investigating with minute attention some of the most antiquated and dubious tracts of European history, and treating of some of its exhausted and almost forgotten dynasties; yet evincing throughout the enthusiasm of an antiquarian, the liberality of a scholar, and the enlightened toleration of a citizen of the world. The author of the work before us, Mr. Henry Wheaton, has for some years filled the situation of Chargé d'Affaires at the court of Denmark. Since he has resided at Copenhagen, he has been led into a course of literary and historic research, which has ended in the production of the present history of those Gothic and Teutonic people, who, inhabiting the northern regions of Europe, have so often and so successfully made inroads into other countries, more genial in climate and abundant in wealth. A considerable part of his book consists of what may be called conjectural or critical history, relating to remote and obscure periods of time, previous to the introduction of Christianity, historiography, and the use of Roman letters among those northern nations. At the outset, therefore, it assumes something of an austere and antiquarian air, which may daunt and discourage that class of readers who are accustomed to find history carefully laid out in easy rambling walks through agreeable landscapes, where just enough of the original roughness is left to produce the picturesque and romantic. Those, however, who have the courage to penetrate the dark and shadowy boundary of our author's work, grimly beset with hyperborean horrors, will find it resembling one of those enchanted forests described in northern poetry,-embosoming regions of wonder and delight, for such as have the hardihood to achieve the adventure. For our own part, we have been struck with the variety of adventurous incidents crowded into these pages, and with the abundance of that poetical material which is chiefly found in early history; while many of the rude traditions of the Normans, the Saxons, and the Danes have come to us with the captivating charms of early association, recalling the marvellous tales and legends that have delighted us in childhood. The first seven chapters may be regarded as preliminary to the narrative, or, more strictly, historical part of the book. They trace the scanty knowledge possessed by Greek and Roman antiquity of the Scandinavian north; the earliest migrations from that quarter to the west, and south, and east of Europe; the discovery of Iceland by the Norwegians; with the singular circumstances which rendered that barren and volcanic isle, where ice and fire contend for mastery, the last asylum of Pagan faith and Scandinavian literature. In this wild region they lingered until the Latin alphabet superseded the Runic character, when the traditionary poetry and oral history of the north were consigned to written records, and rescued from that indiscriminate destruction which overwhelmed them on the Scandinavian continent. The government of Iceland is described by our author as being more properly a patriarchal aristocracy than a republic; and he observes that the Icelanders, in consequence of their adherence to their ancient religion, cherished and cultivated the language and literature of their ancestors, and brought them to a degree of beauty and perfection which they never reached in the christianized countries of the north, where the introduction of the learned languages produced feeble and awkward, though classical imitation, instead of graceful and national originality. When, at the end of the tenth century, Christianity was at length introduced into the island, the national literature, though existing only in oral tradition, was full blown, and had attained too strong and deep a root in the affections of the people to be eradicated, and had given a charm and value to the language with which it was identified. The Latin letters, therefore, which accompanied the introduction of the Romish religion, were merely adapted to designate the sounds heretofore expressed by Runic characters, and thus contributed to preserve in Iceland the ancient language of the north, when exiled from its parent countries of Scandinavia. To this fidelity to its ancient tongue, the rude and inhospitable shores of Iceland owe that charm which gives them an inexhaustible interest in the eyes of the antiquary, and endears them to the imagination of the poet. The popular superstitions,' observes our author, with which the mythology and poetry of the north are interwoven, continued still to linger in the sequestered glens of this remote island.' The language in itself appears to have been worthy of this preservation, since we are told that it bears in its internal structure a strong resemblance to the Latin and Greek, and even to the ancient Persian and Sanscrit, and rivals in copiousness, flexibility and energy, every modern tongue.' Before the introduction of letters, all Scandinavian knowedge was perpetuated in oral tradition by their Skalds, who, like the rhapsodists of ancient Greece, and the bards of the Celtic tribes, were at once poets and historians. We boast of the encouragement of letters and literary men in these days of refinement; but where are they more honored and rewarded than they were among these barbarians of the north? The Skalds, we are told, were the companions and chroniclers of kings, who entertained them in their trains, enriched them with rewards, and sometimes entered the lists with them in trials of skill in their art. They in a manner bound country to country, and people to people, by a delightful link of union, travelling about as wandering minstrels, from land to land, and often performing the office of ambassadors between hostile VOL. XXXV.-NO. 77. 44 tribes. While thus applying the gifts of genius to their divine and.legitimate ends, by calming the passions of men, and harmonizing their feelings into kindly sympathy, they were looked up to with mingled reverence and affection, and a sacred character was attached to their calling. Nay, in such estimation were they held, that they occasionally married the daughters of princes, and one of them was actually raised to a throne in the fourth century of the Christian era. It is true the Skalds were not always treated with equal deference, but were sometimes doomed to experience the usual caprice that attends upon royal patronage. We are told that Canute the Great retained several at his court, who were munificently rewarded for their encomiastic lays. One of them having composed a short poem in praise of his sovereign, hastened to recite it to him, but found him just rising from table, and surrounded by suitors. 66 'The impatient poet craved an audience of the king for his lay, assuring him it was very short." The wrath of Canute was kindled, and he answered the Skald with a stern look,"Are you not ashamed to do what none but yourself has dared,— to write a short poem upon me?-unless by the hour of dinner tomorrow you produce a drapa above thirty strophes long on the same subject, your life shall pay the penalty." The inventive génius of the poet did not desert him he produced the required poem, which was of the kind called Tog-drapa, and the king liberally rewarded him with fifty marks of silver. Thus we perceive how the flowers of poetry sprung up and bloomed amidst eternal ice and snows. The arts of peace were successfully cultivated by the free and independent Icelanders. Their Arctic isle was not warmed by a Grecian sun, but their hearts glowed with the fire of freedom. The natural divisions of the country by icebergs and lava streams insulated the people from each other, and the inhabitants of each valley and each hamlet formed, as it were, an independent community. These were again reunited in the general national assembly of the Althing, which might not be unaptly likened to the Amphyctionic council or Olympic games, where all the tribes of the nation convened to offer the common rites of their religion, to decide their mutual differences, and to listen to the lays of the Skald, which commemorated the exploits of their ancestors. Their pastoral life was diversified by the occupation of fishing. Like the Greeks, too, the sea was their element, but even their shortest voyages bore them much farther from their native shores than |