The first accidental discovery of America by bold adventurers from the remote north took place so early, and under such peculiar circumstances, that neither Scandinavia nor the rest of the world derived any use or benefit from it. After a transient glimpse, the golden treasure again sank beneath the waves. It lay, nevertheless, in the dispensations of Providence, that the descendants of those Scandinavian adventurers should bear an essential part in raising the re-discovered treasure, and in making it productive for mankind. And had not the Scandinavians, by their numerous settlements in the British Islands, engrafted on the population a skill in seamanship before unknown, together with a daring spirit of enterprise, England, in spite of its fertility, its wealth, and its favourable maritime situation, would scarcely have succeeded in solving such a problem as that of closely knitting together lands separated from each other by the Atlantic in all its breadth and vastness. ---------- SECTION XI. Art and Literature. At the period when the Danes were making their conquests in the West, art and literature did not occupy any very high position in Europe. The severe shock which the fall of the Roman Empire had given to all the more elevated pursuits was still far from being overcome. Christian art was in its childhood, and groped its way with weak attempts, and imitations of Roman models; whilst literature, confined for the most part to one-sided theological inquiries, or to the inditing of dry and annalistic chronicles, could scarcely be said to deserve the name. It was, however, a natural result of the long-continued domiciliation of the Romans in France and England, where they founded so many and such important works, and where Christianity was adopted at a comparatively early period, that a taste for art and literature should develop itself in no mean degree in those countries; particularly in comparison of the far North, where the Romans had never ruled, and where the darkness of heathenism still rested on the people.