It has generally been asserted, in consonance with the foregoing view, that the Scandinavians believed that the good and the bad, respectively in Gimle and Nastrond, would experience everlasting rewards and punishments. But Blackwell, the recent editor of Percy's translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities as published in Bohn's Antiquarian Library, argues with great force against the correctness of the assertion.11 The point is 9 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, s. 775, note. 10 Keyser, Religion of the Northmen, part i. ch. vi. 11 Pp. 497-503. dubious; but it is of no great importance, since we know that the spirit and large outlines of their faith have been reliably set forth. That faith, rising from the impetuous blood and rude mind of the martial race of the North, gathering wonderful embellishments from the glowing imagination of the Skalds, reacting, doubly nourished the fierce valor and fervid fancy from which it sprang. It drove the dragon prows of the Vikings marauding over the seas. It rolled the Goths' conquering squadrons across the nations, from the shores of Finland and Skager Rack to the foot of the Pyrenees and the gates of Rome. The very ferocity with which it blazed consumed itself, and the conquest of the flickering faith by Christianity was easy. During the dominion of this religion, the earnest sincerity with which its disciples received it appears alike from the fearful enterprises it prompted them to, the iron hardihood and immeasurable contempt of death it inspired in them, and the superstitious observances which, with pains and expenses, they scrupulously kept. They buried, with the dead, gold, useful implements, ornaments, that they might descend, furnished and shining, to the halls of Hela. With a chieftain they buried a pompous horse and splendid armor, that he might ride like a warrior into Valhalla. The true Scandinavian, by age or sickness deprived of dying in battle, ran himself through, or flung himself from a precipice, in this manner to make amends for not expiring in armed strife, if haply thus he might snatch a late seat among the Einheriar. With the same motive the dying sea king had himself laid on his ship, alone, and launched away, with out stretched sails, with a slow fire in the hold, which, when he was fairly out at sea, should flame up and, as Carlyle says, "worthily bury the old hero at once in the sky and in the ocean." Surely then, if ever, "the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent took it by force." CHAPTER IV. ETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.