100 
of suicide was hanging ; several heroes and heroines in the 
Sagas chose this mode of death; which was considered to have 
nothing shameful in it; and which was performed in the 
presence of the people. One singularly impressive mode of 
self-destruction, the one, perhaps, of all which takes the imagin- 
ation most by its solemnity and beauty, was that adopted by 
Siguard Ring and others, who went alone on board a burning 
ship, aud suffered themselves to be blown with full sails out into 
the open ocean. Captives would solicit death at the hand of 
their captors, the usual form chosen being the exquisitely 
horrible one of carving an eagle, as it was called, on the 
captive’s back, — that is, cutting with a sword-stroke down the 
backbone and then across the ribs, so as to expose the lungs, — 
a mode of death truly worthy of an athletic savage. 
22. There are still some points in the Northern character 
that I should be glad to discuss, such as the estimate of wealth 
and the fidelity of friends and foster-brothers, but time fails 
me before the subject approaches exhaustion. I have said 
enough, I trust, to demonstrate in what chief particulars 
Scandinavian pagan civilization forestalled the advantages of 
Christianity, and in what particulars it glaringly failed to 
approach them. In the consideration of the modes of life 
among, perhaps, the most elevated people of heathen antiquity, 
one is struck by the utter inability of the unilluminated 
conscience to perceive any nobility in those passive virtues 
which Christianity alone inculcates, and which the life of its 
Divine Founder so uniformly and so exquisitely illustrated. 
That social and domestic order are good, that it is well that 
women be guarded and honoured, that temperance, mercy, aud 
uprightness are excellent qualities, are ideas which, it would 
seem, may spontaneously start in the mind of a thoughtful 
pagan, but those words of self-abnegation that struck the 
antique world with dismay , — “ love your enemies,” “ blessed 
are the poor in spirit,” “come untome for I am meek aud 
lowly,” for these there is no echo in the unawakened, uuillumi- 
nated heart, and for the just understanding of these more 
knowledge of divine things is needed than the wisest skald or 
sophist can weave out of his own unaided intellect. 
The Chairman.— It is now my duty to move a vote of thanks to Mr. 
Gosse for his interesting paper. For myself, I should have been glad if it 
had pointed out how far the matters with which it deals are purely mythical, 
and how far they distinctly rest upon an historical basis, and also if the 
dates of the events alluded to are historical. 
