The analysis of the elements that enter into the composition of nations, and the effect of their combinations, is one of the most fascinating studies in universal history. The loom of time has been weaving garments for this old world of ours, and the nations of the earth have clothed him with the glory of their sons and daughters, as long as the fibre of their manhood or womanhood could stand the wear. When age and use have worn them thin, and the strength of their fibre has passed away, the cast-off garments have been flung to the rag-man, old Father Time, who has been able sometimes to use the pieces that still were good for some new robe with which to drape the captious old shoulders. This is history. The weaving of these robes must never cease, for the wearing of them uses them up, and their durability always depends on the stuff out of which they are made. The latest piece, which is still in the loom, is the nation into whose texture we are now weaving our lives and characters, and those of some seventy millions more of all kinds of men and women. Since our own go in with the rest, we may be pardoned for the interest which some of us feel in the improvement of the fibre from which the nation is made, and our anxiety that it be of the right kind. Our present inquiry concerns the quality of a part of our social fabric, the Scandinavian element in our population. What has been its use and its influence in the older nations, and by what processes does it find its place in the new?