Literary Hours; Or, Sketches, Critical, Narrative, and Poetical Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820 edition. Excerpt: ...shines with genial beam on all, The joy that dwells in Odin's hall. Bruce. f Rom the rapid sketch which we have given in the preceding paper, of the character and attributes of the chief deity of Scandinavia and of his system of rewards and punishments, the intelligent reader will immediately infer the vast influence which such a mythology must necessarily exercise over the manners and opinions of its enthusiastic disciples. It was, indeed, more than any religion, which had previously, or has since existed, calculated to form and perpetuate a nation of warriors. All the future happiness which it unfolded, was exclusively destined to the valiant, and to those of this description only, who perished on the field of battle, or who, to escape the horrors and degradation of servitude, inflicted death upon themselves. To these, the halls of Odin, we have seen, were ever open, and on these were all the luxuries, most dear to a northern imagination, lavished. On the contrary, the pusillanimous and those who died of lingering disease, were not only excluded from society, and held, by the laws of Scandinavia, in a light contemptible and infamous, but they were condemned, in another world, to a severe and perpetual punishment, plunged into more than midnight gloom, surrounded by piles of mountain-ice and regions of eternal frost, for ever taunted by the apparitions of the damned, and devoted as the prey of loathsome serpents. Military enthusiasm, therefore, and an utter contempt of danger and of death, were the direct consequences of this martial creed. Hence the love of combat flows, Hence the warrior's throbbing breast; Bright his kindling courage glows, Fierce he shakes his frowning crest; He grasps his sword, he burns with noble rage, To rush where...