Much of the power and civilization of Greece grew from her commerce and maritime enterprise—from the sea. Dr. Arnold, the historian, says very truly, that the sea has always been one of the greatest agents of liberty and civilization. The supremacy of Athens over Sparta, then, and in the memory of all future time, was due to the port of the Piræus. The crowning glories of the Attic metropolis—her immortal sculptures and temples and her splendid philosophies—were owing to a refining intercourse with other peoples, and to the maritime exactions, somewhat tyrannically levied from those sea-born states that, from the waters and shores of the Mediterranean, looked to Athens as their mother city and protectress. Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse and other seaports—ancient and modern—have owed their wealth, celebrity and distinguishing character to their respective geographical positions. If we follow the movements of the human family through Germany and up to the high latitudes of Europe, we find that the severe elements of the north and the peculiarities of soil were able to imbue the human mind with a portion of their own character. The life of the great Scandinavian race was necessarily divided between war and plunder; and the ideas which they entertained of the superior powers and a future state were reflected from their circumstances. These corsairs and kempions believed the Valhalla of departed spirits was a place where the happy warriors fought one another during the day, and feasted together at night, (eating flesh and drinking mead from deer’s horns) after Odin had miraculously put together the severed limbs and healed all the wounds; till the morrow should once more renew these murdering beatitudes of the boreal heaven! Again—the iron hills of the Northern region helped to form the mythologies and superstitions originally so distinctive of the Scandinavian mind. The Lapps, Finns, and other peoples of the high latitudes, were in a great measure miners and smiths. Æschylus, we believe it is, who says that the sword is “the child of Scythia”—a saying not more figurative than matter-of-fact. Jornades, a Goth, says Scandinavia was the Forge of Mankind—_humani generis officium_—indicating the metallurgic nature of that influence exerted on the fate of the more Southern European nations. The men who mined, and who hammered into shape the swords of the Northmen, were small in their physical proportions, and usually had their stithies near the mouths of the mines among the hills. Hence the kobold-workers, the hill-folk, the goblins, trolls, dwarfs, wee men and so forth, of a superstition which has overflowed the rest of Europe, almost as extensively as the military migrations from the same places did, once upon a time. These little hyperborean _diableries_ have wandered all over the fields of the South and permanently tinged the currents of its various literature.