of a cock or the sign of the cross is enough to drive them back to their hiding-places. They shun daylight and fixed, customary spots. They generally surprise casual travelers, and upon them in lone, romantic spots, practice all their arts of enticement and seduction. There is always something of magic, of the supernatural, connected with them. The Greek sirens are not like common women; but once conceive of their physical existence, and you understand them thoroughly. Their laws of action are purely human, and we do not find them one half so unnatural as our neighbor that has a splay foot or a hunchback. The Northern witches, however, are formed like human females, but obey unknown and mysterious powers. The commonest words and associations of men are bans to them. Only so long do they have power as nothing human disturbs and overthrows their supernatural spells. Again let us look for a moment at another division of Grecian fiction. The grim Cyclops who toils for Vulcan, working like mortal men, and forging divine things, it is true, like any Grecian blacksmith, has a counterpart of a somewhat different character in the North. The reality and vividness of the Greek changes as we approach the Pole. In deep caverns distorted, strange little dwarfs work by the aid of supernatural powers wondrous weapons, swords of incredible qualities, armor that defies mortal blades, bracelets of wondrous and cunning finish and singular properties--all here is miraculous, the workman, the process, and the work. The vividness with which Homer presents to us the one-eyed Polyphemus, with his tree-staff and his ponderous body, is exchanged by the Scandinavian for smallness, indistinctness of form and of power. The grand in the South is obtained by giving enlarged pictures of man as he is; in the North, by investing him with strange, magic, mysterious qualities. In mental as well as material nature, a general haziness of outline conveys the idea of greatness as strongly, though in another manner, as the sharp and perceptible outline of any thing really great.