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butes, and Thor to Mars. In honour of them three days of the week 

 are still nominally dedicated. The first of these deities, Odin, the 

 Mahomet of the north, is thought to have been one of those allies 

 whom Mithridates sought on the banks of the Tanais, and in the 

 bosom of the Scythian forests. A few years before the birth of Christ, 

 he is said to have invaded the North, where he found those traces of 

 the one pure and primitive religion, which diverged from the East 

 over all the world. He was, however, successful in introducing there 

 polytheism, with all its incidental doctrine of inferior agents in 

 the management of the universe. He taught a belief in evil spirits, 

 and that they were held in chains until a fixed revolution of time, 

 when they were to be let loose for the destruction of the world and 

 the dissolution of matter. He inspired military ardour with the opinion 

 that certain virgin valkaries, corresponding with the Mahometan hou- 

 ries, attended in Valhall, the paradise of the brave, and there received 

 and welcomed such warriors as fell gloriously in battle. That three 

 destinies, respectively presiding over the past, present, and future, 

 dispensed the ages and fortunes of the human race ; that the consum- 

 mation of all things was to be effected by the spirits of evil in their 

 ambition attacking the gods, by whom they are to be effectually 

 subdued and flung into a hell remote from the sun, and horrible with 

 serpents and winged dragons. The votaries of this self-elected prophet 

 believed in two heavens and two hells, one of each temporary until 

 the general renovation, when, according to his revelation, a new world 

 shall arise where calamities are to be unknown, and the Deity to shine 

 forth in his best attributes. Their external worship consisted in sacri- 

 fices of herbs and first fruits, then of animals, and lastly of men ; and 

 many of those long flat rocks supported by three or four others, which 

 are in common parlance attributed to Druids, were the altars of 

 their immolation. They practised a species of infant baptism to pre- 



