from the time of the rise of the German free burghs, to the days of the psalm-singing weavers of Norwich and Taunton, and the lecture-loving apprentices of London, have always been distinguished for resistance, 'to the mild rule of holy church.' No, it is not to London, or to the other cities, where the enterprising spirit of England first found a home that we should look, but to the fair villages, and pastoral glens of 'merry England in the olden times.'

Well, look there; and bitter abuse of the clergy, and fierce denunciations of the exactions of the spiritual courts, meet us, as the earliest expression of rustic feeling.* But, 'merry England' has a hero, who serves as an exemplar to the peasantry, just as King Arthur and Sir Launcelot, serve as exemplars to the higher orders. And who is he? and what are his characteristics-reverence for 'church and state,' humble submission to the spiritual powers that be? Bold Robin Hood, how does thy laugh ring through the merry greenwood! The pursy cellarer of St. Mary's abbey is a prisoner in his hands, and Robin thinks he does holy church good service by mulcting her servant well, and bestowing the spoil on the poor knight from whom it had been taken. The bishop himself rides through the forest with well appointed ménye, he is seized, and compelled to sing mass in a tree, as the price of his liberation. In the name of common sense, what reverence for the clergy could there be in days when ballads like these were sung in every market-place, and echoed on every village green? Where was respect for the servants of holy church? Echo might well answer where.'

We cannot conclude without expressing our admiration of the masterly style in which Mr. Naylor has 're-produced' this curious and valuable 'brute epic.' We must also remark, how tastefully correct is the whole 'getting up.' Familiar as we have been with many of the most beautiful manuscripts of the 12th century, we were astonished at the close resemblance of the title page, and headings of the chapters, to the choicest specimens of the middle-age calligrapher. The binding, even to the spirited little vignettes on the sides, is in perfect keeping; and the book, while it forms an important addition to the scholar's library, would be an ornament for the drawing room table.

* Vide 'Political Songs,' edited by Wright.

Art. IV. The History of Sweden, translated from the Original of Anders Fryxell. Edited by Mary Howitt. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley.

The

THIS translation is extremely well timed. It is an auspicious feature of the present day, that it has turned a portion of its vast activity towards a better acquaintance with those northern nations of Europe from whom we derive so much of our language, our customs, our national spirit, and our blood. neglect of almost all endeavour to make this acquaintance, till recently, is an extraordinary circumstance, when we consider the knowledge of our own history, and the history of the origin and growth of our institutions and language, of which those regions are the great storehouse; and perhaps can only be accounted for by the fact of our always talking and writing of the savage Danes as the enemies of our Saxon ancestors, and of our looking to Germany as to our great original fatherland. But the fact is, that it is far more to these northern nations than to Germany as a nation, that we owe our speech and customs. This speech and these customs were derived chiefly from the tribes of the eastern shores of Germany, and those whom we are accustomed to class under our vague name of Anglo-Saxons, were that great tribe or section of the Teutonic family which stretched itself along the whole north-eastern shores of Europe, from Lapland to France. These were originally but one people, and their languages at the present day remain but so many dialects of the same primitive tongue. The Plat Deutsch, or low German, spoken in Holstein, is far more distinct from the German, than from the Danish or the Belgian; and so much greater is the affinity of this language to our own tongue than the modern German is, that some of our English dialects are but slight variations of this language. Hence, he who instead of confining his study to modern German or to ancient Anglo-Saxon, applies it to any one of the branches of this extensive language, soon finds that he has a key to all the tongues of this far-stretching region, and that in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holstein, Holland and Belgium, he hears at the present hour but modifications, and those very intelligible ones, of the sounds that were heard on our hills and plains, when Dane and Saxon contended for the mastery of this fair isle.

It is evident, therefore, what a flood of light remains yet to be poured from this vast and ancient source on many matters of the liveliest national interest to us. In the department of derivative philology alone, the study of these languages is indis

pensible. When we take up that stupendous work of human industry, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, we know not whether more to lament the inadequate knowledge of the great lexicographer for his task, or to admire the ingenuity with which he disguised it. The Doctor had no knowledge of German, about as little of Dutch, except such as looking into a Dutch Dictionary could give him, and even his acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon was superficial. Of Plat-Deutsch and the Scandinavian tongues, he was utterly ignorant. Hence we have derivatives of our words, at third, and fourth hand; in many hundred instances we never come near the root, and have often even French where we should get Danish or Norwegian. As the cultivation of the mother-tongue proceeds, there will come for some future lexicographer the arduous, but most interesting, task of a thorough revision of the labours of Johnson. To take one out of innumerable instances, we shall then not have such a word as 'clover' derived from Anglo-Saxon, but from the direct Swedish Klöver, or more direct Danish, Klover, because it is clove, the present Danish word, for divided, meaning also a cross, from the manner of this division. The student of these languages, indeed, can turn nowhere without seeing traces of them all over England in the names of people and places. It is curious, especially in the neighbourhood of London, to see in the Hacons, the Rolfs, the Snewins, the Snellins, the Harolds, Swains, Swainsons, Stensons, and similar names, the descendants of the great Danish leaders who distinguished themselves in the attacks on this part of the kingdom, and made good their settlement here. Again; in our names of towns and villages we often find not so much a German as Scandinavian foundation; Skegby, the building in the wood; Holmby, the building on the island; Kirkby, the church building, &c. But in the laudable work of tracing the origin, and composing complete glossaries of our different dialects, in which so much progress has been made of late years, this northern fountain of original language presents the most wonderful wealth. It is marvellous with what a tenacious and unchanging hold the common people in most parts of the kingdom have preserved their mother-tongue, from the days of the Danes to the present. We have been astonished in the cottages of Lancashire we aver, to hear the people calling spiders Attercops, a name not derived from the aranea of their Roman progenitors, or the spinne of their German ones, nor even from the spindel of their Swedish ones, so commonly confounded with the Danes, but from the pure Danish term, which has thus clung there unchanged for a thousand years. Our purpose being at present not philologic or dialectic, we merely allude in the most passing manner to these important

facts. In history we come at once into the most interesting and exciting position. We have the very people as actors in the earlier periods, whom we are accustomed to regard with terror, as the savage Danes; they, who carried fire and devastation among the Saxons, and made themselves, as vikings and warriors, a dread and deathless name in our annals. We here learn how they regarded the magnificent isle of England and its people. What were their views and feelings and motives in their expeditions; and we have a strange, wild picture of their life at home in their native north, handed down in their songs and sagas, or legends. To this singular scene we seemed to be first amusingly introduced by Mr. Laing's travels in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway; and his recent publication of a translation of the Heimkringla, or Saga of Snorro Sturleson, has further unfolded it. We have the very battle of London bridge with the Danes, and their various expeditions against this country, recorded by their scalds, or accompanying poets, and transferred thence to the pages of their sagas. In the first volume of the history now under review, we possess these in a more compact form, and bearing only their due proportion to the whole national history. These circumstances are of themselves sufficient to invest this history with a high interest, but the introduction by Mrs. Howitt of the admirable Tales of Everyday Life of Miss Bremer to our literature, has given a still quicker impulse to our curiosity. We desire to learn something more of the progress and present condition of a people originally so nearly allied to us, and now showing that they can even charm and improve us by their living literature.

The Swedes possess two eminent living historians Gejer and Fryxell. Gejer's history is an admirably philosophical and detailed history, and invaluable to the native, or the minute inquirer, who is anxious to make himself profoundly acquainted with the uttermost facts and springs of action of the Swedish annals. Fryxell has aimed to be more popular. He styles his work himself, Berättelser ur Swenska Historien ;'- Relations from Swedish History.' This is, however, rather what he at first intended to make it, than what he has made it. In the preface to this translation, written by him expressly for it, he says,The first three volumes (the portion embraced in the two volumes here translated), including the time from Odin to Erik XIV., deposed in 1569, were the author's first essay, in the compilation of which he considered the taste of the general readers alone, and therefore consulted only the ordinary printed authorities; but, in the latter volumes, he has more and more availed himself of the hitherto untouched treasures of the

archives; and thus by greater detail endeavoured to diffuse a clearer light over certain events hitherto but partially known.' This seems to us the most rational of all modes of writing a national history, and to have been very fortunate for the popularity of Fryxell's work. To compress the dim subjects of unwritten tradition, and to expand as the narrative advances into more known and important periods, is to keep the true measure of the reader's interest. Accordingly, the second of these volumes rises far in interest over the first, and is, in truth, a most deeply engrossing narrative. We shall, therefore, take but a cursory view of the first volume. It opens with a welldigested and sufficient description of the Scandinavian mythology, highly valuable as illustrative of succeeding parts of the history, and which shows us that the details of those wonderful things given us in Mallet's Northern Antiquities,' are very defective in their nomenclature, being obviously derived from a German medium, and having therefore all the proper names Germanized. The volume then embraces the heathen epoch from 100 years before Christ to A. D. 1061, or nearly the time of our Norman conquest; a period rather of wild tradition than of history; and then advances to the deposition of Christian I. in 1464. Histories of Sweden are not wanting in English, but being derived as they are from secondary sources, we feel, in perusing this fresh from the hands of a native, to whom all legitimate sources are open, a novel and totally different interest; nor should we do justice to it, did we not give a brief specimen or two of the contents of its earliest portion.

Bodwar, a Norwegian hero, is travelling towards the court of the celebrated Danish king and warrior, Rolf, when, during a night's lodging in the cottage of an old man and woman, as the old man and Bodwar were conversing, the old dame began to weep aloud :

Why weepest thou?' asked Bodwar. 'Ah!' said she, 'we had once a son called Hottur, who went to the king's court for pleasure, but the men-at-arms made joke of him, and set him in a heap of bones in a corner of the ball, and it is now their amusement, during meals, to throw the bones they have picked, upon him, which sometimes wound him sadly. I shall never get him back again, neither do I know if he be alive or dead. Now, I ask nothing from thee for this thy night's lodging, but that thou wilt not cast the larger but only the little bones on my son, for thy hands look so strong and so heavy, that he could scarcely bear a blow from them.'

Bodwar promised this, and expressed his opinion that he did not think it very creditable to beat a man with bones, or to use rough play with children or weak people.