Curdish, and Caucasian, and other Asiatic mountaineers, and existed till lately in the Scottish Highlands. But descriptions of the latter have been multiplied, until they have become familiar in men's mouths as household terms; and we pass in preference to a less hackneyed subject. In the eighth and ninth centuries the piratical spirit of ancient Greece was revived among those fierce Danes and Norwegians, who led a life of constant rapine and bloodshed; of interminable warfare at home, of frightful devastation abroad. The Sea-kings of the North were a race of beings whom Europe beheld with horror. Without a yard of territorial property, with no wealth but their ships, no force but their crews, and no hope but from their swords, they swarmed upon the boisterous ocean, and plundered in every district that they could approach. . . . . . It is declared to have been a law or custom in the North, that one of the male children should be selected to remain at home to inherit the government. The rest were exiled to the ocean, to wield their sceptres amid the turbulent waters. The consent of the northern societies entitled all men of royal descent, who assumed piracy as a profession, to enjoy the name of kings, though they possessed no territory. The sea-kings had the same honour, but they were only a portion of those pirates, or vikingr, who in the ninth century were covering the ocean. Not only the children of the kings, but every man of importance equipped ships, and roamed the seas to acquire property by force. Piracy was not only the most honourable occupation and the best harvest of wealth; it was not only consecrated to public estimation by the illustrious who pursued it, but no one was esteemed noble, no one was respected, who did not return in the winter to his home with

ships laden with booty."* Part of the regulations

* Turner, Ang. Sax.

of a band of pirates is preserved by Bartholinus, and may serve as a specimen of the better class, though the reader may not be inclined to agree with him in considering them as men' devoted to virtue, bravery and humanity, rather than to the oppression of innocent persons.' These regulations were called the constitutions of King Half. 'No one might wear a sword more than an ell in length, that they might be compelled to close in battle. Each was to be equal in strength to twelve ordinary men. They made prisoners neither women, nor boys. None was to bind his wounds until the lapse of twenty hours. These men everywhere infested the land, and every where were victorious. They lay at anchor at the ends of headlands. They never raised bulwarks on their ships' sides, and never lowered their sails, let the wind blow as it would. Their captain never had in his ship more than sixty men.' No less creditable were the ordinances of Hialmar, the sum of which was, 'that his men should plunder neither traders nor husbandmen; that they should neither rob women of their money, nor carry them off against their consent: and should not eat raw flesh.'* The fiercer class indulged in this disgusting food, and washed it down suitably with draughts of blood. Savage in all things, it was an amusement to, toss infants from one to another, and catch them on the points of their lances. Many used to work themselves literally into a state of bestial ferocity. Those who were subject to these paroxysms were called Berserkir: they studied to resemble wild beasts; they excited themselves to a strength which has been compared to that of bears; and this unnatural power was succeeded, as we may well suppose, by corresponding debility. In the French and Italian romances, we frequently find a warrior endowed, for a part of the day, with a double or treble share of

* Bartholinus, de causis contemptæ a Danis mortis, lib. ii, 9.

strength; and it is not improbable that the fiction may have been derived from this species of frenzy, which is thus described by the Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus. 'Sivald had seven sons, so skilled in magic, that, impelled by the sudden access of fury, they used often to howl savagely, to knaw their shields, to devour live coals, and rush fearlessly into fire; and this passion could only be appeased by confinement in fetters, or by human blood.' This Sivald and Haldan were rivals for the Swedish crown. Sivald challenged Haldan to decide their quarrel by contending alone with himself and his seven sons. The latter answered that the legitimate form of the Iduel did not admit of more than two. 'No wonder,' replied his antagonist that a man without wife, or offspring, whose mind and body are alike deficient in warmth, should refuse the proffered encounter. But my children, who own me as the author of their existence, and myself have one common origin, and must be considered as one man.' The force of the argument was admitted, and in obedience to this modest request, Haldan knocked out the brains of the eight.

The same warrior was challenged by another Berserkir, named Harthben, who always had twelve chosen men in attendance to prevent his doing mischief when the fit was upon him. Upon hearing that Haldan undertook to fight himself and his followers, he was seized with a paroxysm which was not subdued until he had killed six of them, by way of trying his hand and then he was killed by his antagonist, as he richly deserved, for throwing away half his chance. So also we read that Odin could blunt the weapons of his enemies; that his soldiers went to battle without armour, biting their shields, raging like wolves or dogs like bears or bulls in strength,

*Saxo. lib. vii.

they slaughtered their foes, and were themselves invulnerable to fire and sword.* At length, however, this passion changed from a distinction to a reproach, and was ultimately prohibited by penal laws.

Harold Harfager, or the Fairhaired, who consolidated Norway under his sceptre, A.D. 910, cleared the Northern Ocean from the scourge of piracy, as did Minos the Grecian seas. Still the spirit of depredation was alive. The spread of Christianity moderated the excesses of the Northmen, but it was long ere their fondness for freebooting was extinguished; nay, the very rights of religion were employed to give a sanction to robbery. Maritime expeditions seemed to the Danes pious and necessary, that they might protect themselves from the incursions of their Sclavonic neighbours on the continent, and piracy was therefore practised under certain laws, which in the opinion of Bartholinus breathe a spirit of defence rather than of aggression. 'Pirates had power to take such ships as appeared suited to their purpose, even without consent of the owners, upon payment of oneeighth of the booty by way of hire. Before a voyage they made confession to the priests, and having undergone penance, they received the sacrament, as if at the point of death, believing that things would go more prosperously, if they duly propitiated God before war. Content with their food and armour, they avoided burdening their vessels, and took nothing that could delay their voyage. Their watches were frequent, their mode of life sparing. They slept leaning upon their oars. Their battles were numerous: their victory ever easy, and almost bloodless. The booty was shared equally, the master receiving no larger portion than a common rower. Those Christians whom they found enslaved in the captured vessels,

they presented with clothing, and dismissed to their own homes.'*

The frantic ravages of these barbarians have been described by the sufferers, and belong in part to our own history; while those committed by the unknown tribes, who two thousand years before occupied the other extremity of Europe, are long since forgotten, or remembered only in the flattering traditions of their countrymen. The former, therefore, are known and execrated, while the latter stand fair with the world and in the absence of evidence, we are far from wishing to impute to them that bestial ferocity which so often disgraced the Northmen but who can compare the passages just given with that quoted from Thucydides, without being convinced that they refer to corresponding periods of civilization, and describe similar principles, if not similar modes of action? And as the best historical accounts which we can procure represent the feelings and habits of the early Grecks as closely akin to those of our own barbarous ancestors, so their traditions and fables lead us to the same conclusion. The Scaldic poems bear, indeed, a more savage cast; some say from the inhospitable rigour of our northern sky; but more probably because we possess them in their original, or nearly their original, state, while the earliest Greek compositions extant were written in an age comparatively civilized. But the heroes of both were actuated by the same spirit. Siegfrid and Wolf Dietrich differ little but in external ornament from Castor, or Achilles, or Diomed their pride was in the same accomplishments, their delight in the same pleasures, their hope in an immortality of the same sensual enjoyments.†

*Barthol. 1, ii, 9.

We speak with some degree of doubt, both from the fluctuating notions of the Greeks upon this head, and from imperfeet acquaintance with their opinions. The unhesitating belief