That these notions are wild and extravagant will be asserted by most readers; but do they not involve physical truths? Were they not invented by the priests of old to cover their learning from the vulgar gaze? Let us hear the interpretation of Finn Magnussen, the most learned, the most acute, though, in too many instances, the most visionary, of northern commentators. The giant Ymer, he observes, represents the chaotic undigested state of the earth, produced by the combined effects of heat and cold upon water. That water was the first existing matter, is evident even from holy scripture. Many nations regarded it as the source of all things. The opinions of the Greek philosopher on this subject are well known; but we may mention the Orphic fragment preserved by Athenagoras. The water produced mud; the mud produced a monster with three heads,—the head of a god, of a lion, of an ox. This monster, which, however, was a deity, laid an egg, the upper half of which formed the heaven, the lower half the earth. From the union of heaven and earth, the offspring were, first the three fates, and then the giants and cyclops who rebelled, and were eventually cast into the Tartarean gulf. The Greeks, like all other people, had seen the mud deposited by water give birth to animals, after receiving for a time the solar heat. The action, therefore, of fire on the slimy particles thus deposited, was received as a generative principle; and assuredly there is nothing more irrational in the system of Scandinavia than in that of Greece. The Egyptian system was conformable with it. An original chaos; the separation of the mud from the waters; the action of the sun, or of heat, on the mud; the fermentation which followed; and the origin of animal existence, are the great features: as a necessary result, the sun, no less than the water, was deified. In the Scandinavian, as in the other systems, some kinds of matter were eternal. Eternal were the mists of Nifleheim, and the well Vergelmer; eternal perhaps the abode of Surtur, Surtur himself, and his fiery spirits. From the beneficent Alfadur nothing evil was to spring; he, therefore, we suppose, could not create Muspelheim, or its inhabitants; nor could he give birth to the giants of the frost, who are emphatically called wicked: hence their origin from the poisonous waters of Nifleheim.