224 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XII. 



'•spoiling of the Egyptians " sanctioned by custom, and 

 even permitted by the Church, which did not disdain occa- 

 sionally to share in the profits of a successful cruise, when 

 presented in the decent form of silver candlesticks and 

 other ecclesiastical gauds. As to the ancient historian, he 

 mentions these matters as a thing of course. " Here the 

 King landed, burnt, and ravaged ; " " there the Jarl gained 

 much booty ; " " this summer, they took a cruise in the 

 Baltic, to gather property," etc., much as a modern biogra- 

 pher would speak of a gentleman's successful railroad specu- 

 lations, his taking shares in a coal mine, or coming into a 

 " nice little thing in the Long Annuities." Nevertheless, 

 there is something significant of his future vocation, in 

 a speech which Olaf makes to his assembled friends and 

 relations, imparting to them his design of endeavouring 

 to regain possession of the throne : " I and my men have 

 nothing for our support save what we captured in war, 

 for which we have hazarded both life and soul ; for many an 

 innocent man have we deprived of his property, and some of 

 their lives, and foreigners are now sitting in the possessions 

 of my fathers." One sees here a faint glimmer of the Saint's 

 nimbus, over the helmet of the Viking, a dawning percep- 

 tion of the "rights of property," which, no doubt, must 

 have startled his hearers into the most ardent conservative 

 zeal for the good old marauding customs. 



But though years elapsed, and fortunes changed, before 

 this dim light of the early Church became that scorching 

 and devouring flame which, later, spread terror and con- 

 fusion among the haunts of the still lingering ancient gods, 

 an earnest sense of duty seems to have been ever present 

 with him. If it cannot be denied that he shared the errors 

 of other proselytizing monarchs, and put down Paganism 

 with a stern and bloody hand, no merely personal injury ever 

 weighed with him. How grand is his reply to those who 

 advise him to ravage with fire and sword the rebellious 

 district of Throndhjem, as he had formerly punished num- 

 bers of his subjects who had rejected Christianity: — "We 



