236 SCIENCE. [x. 



land and sea, proved that they were such. They were 

 favoured, moreover, by circumstances, or as I should 

 rather put it by that divine Providence which deter- 

 mined their times, and the bounds of their habitation. 

 They came in as the heritors of the decaying civilisa- 

 tion of Greece and Rome ; they colonised territories 

 which gave to man special fair play, but no more, in 

 the struggle for existence, the battle with the powers 

 of Nature ; tolerably fertile, tolerably temperate ; with 

 boundless means of water communication ; freer than 

 most parts of the world from those terrible natural 

 phenomena, like the earthquake and the hurricane, 

 before which man lies helpless and astounded, a child 

 beneath the foot of a giant. Nature was to them not 

 so inhospitable as to starve their brains and limbs, as 

 it has done for the Esquimaux or Fuegian ; and not 

 so bountiful as to crush them by its very luxuriance, 

 as it has crushed the savages of the tropics. They 

 saw enough of its strength to respect it ; not enough 

 to cower before it : and they and it have fought it out ; 

 and it seems to me, standing either on London Bridge 

 or on a Holland fen-dyke, that they are winning at last. 

 But they had a sore battle : a battle against their 

 own fear of the unseen. They brought with them, out 

 of the heart of Asia, dark and sad nature-superstitions, 

 some of which linger among our peasantry till this day, 

 of elves, trolls, nixes, and what not. Their Thor and 

 Odin were at first, probably, only the thunder and the 

 wind : but they had to be appeased in the dark marches 

 of the forest, where hung rotting on the sacred oaks, 

 amid carcases of goat and horse, the carcases of human 

 victims. No one acquainted with the early legends 

 and ballads of our race, but must perceive throughout 



