nature, until the gods thrust a sword into his jaws, and thus gagged him. There he lies until Ragnarok, when, like Midgard’s serpent, he will break loose. There is no personage in the whole system of a more mythic character than Loke. He was evidently the personification of the active evil principle. His name signifies _flame_; and he is a representative of the demon of fire—the _destructive_, in opposition to the alimentary, aerial fire, of which Balder may be considered the symbol. At this day the devil is called Loke by the Norwegians. Still there is frequently some obscurity in the mythi respecting him, and it is occasioned by his being so often confounded with the demon king of Utgard. Though they were originally _one_, the Edda has made him into two, in conformity no doubt with the genius of two distinct systems of mythology. The mysterious allusion to the assistance which he afforded Odin in the work of creation, is one great proof of his identification with the powers of evil: his relationship with the giants, on both sides, sufficiently accounts for his hostility towards the gods, with whom he associated that he might find an opportunity of triumphing over them. He is styled a coward, because his deeds will not bear the light—the inventor of deceit, of lies, of every thing base. The first of his offspring, the great serpent, is evidently a relic of the Celtic creed. The Britons acknowledged its existence; and there are two bold promontories on the coast to which they have given the name of the Worm’s Head.[63] Of the wolf Fenris the character is more obscure, though no less confirmatory of the mythos. It is doubtless a symbol of destruction. In several countries of the East, it is believed that a wolf will finally destroy, if not the world, the sun and moon. Thus, in the Budhist system, a wolf, Rakoo, is always on the watch to swallow both luminaries. This mythos, we suspect, with a living writer[64], has given rise to the superstition so common in the middle ages,—that of men-wolves; viz., the power possessed by some men of assuming the form of that animal. Hela, or death, the offspring of sin, or Satan (Loke), needs no explanation. We may, however, observe, that there is some plausibility in the arguments of Magnussen, when he attempts to show that Helheim is more ancient than Valhalla; that it is the place of punishment acknowledged by the original inhabitants, while the warrior’s heaven was introduced by the Gothic conquerors. The mythological fables in which Loke so prominently appears, will illustrate his character better, and certainly more agreeably, than any formal description. In most of them he was associated with Thor; but we select one in which Odin and Hoenir were concerned with him. Hoenir, we must observe, is but another name for Vile, the brother of Odin, who assisted in the work of creation.[65] RAPE OF IDUNA.