We rode out in carriages from the university, and passed in sight of the house which covers the Mora Stone, _on_ which the kings of Sweden were chosen and crowned. It is made of about twelve different stones joined and inscribed with the names of the monarchs who have been elected by the voice of the people. In 1780 the house was built over it by Gustavus III., but that was seven centuries after the first inscription upon it; for here it is written that Sten Kil was chosen in 1060, and seven others, down to Christian I., in 1457. Gustavus Wasa met his subjects here in mass-meeting and addressed them from this stone in 1520. The hoar of ages, with all the memories of the revolutions of these centuries, gathers on this spot. It is now only a shrine for pilgrims with antiquity on the brain, who wander the world over to see what the world _has_ been. I have a large development of that weakness, and it has a great gratification in this part of Europe: more, indeed, than it had in Egypt; less than in Palestine. In the Holy Land the sacred associations with the religion we love makes every acre of it dear to the heart: we take pleasure in every stone, and favor all the dust of Judea. With less awe,—indeed, with no awe,—but with wonder, we now come to Old Upsala, to the graves of the pagan deities. They are three conical mounds, about fifty feet in height, very regular in shape, with a broad plateau at the summit, and the unvarying tradition of the country is, that the largest of the mounds is the grave of Odin; the next, that of Thor; and the smallest, the grave of Freytag, Odin’s daughter. In all probability these are natural hillocks artificially reduced to these regular forms, and superstitiously set apart in the minds of the people as the graves of persons to whom their ancestors paid divine honors. To this hour, the name of Odin is used as that of a demon king, and “Go to Odin” is the profane execration which answers to the modern imprecation, “Go to the devil.” On this spot the great temple to Odin was erected, and his worship maintained with horrid rites and ceremonies. The altars here have smoked with human blood and burnt sacrifices. In the sacred groves that surrounded the temple these savage deities were propitiated with all manner of offerings, parents laying their children with their own hands upon the altars, and slaying them in the face of heaven. A record still exists of seventy-two bodies being seen suspended at one time from the limbs of trees in this grove; men, and lower animals than men, if any animals are lower than such men, being offered in company to please the deities of the wood.