A condition of society identical with that described in the latter part of this extract still exists among the 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.”[6] Part of the regulations 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 everywhere 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