By an inspection of the map it will appear, that all these tribes were situated nearly as favorably for maritime enterprize as the nations which inhabited the shores of the Mediterranean; and though their earliest expeditions by sea were not stimulated by the same cause, commercial pursuits, yet they arose from causes equally efficient.  While the countries bordering on the Mediterranean were blessed with a fertile soil and a mild climate, those on the Baltic were comparatively barren and ungenial; their inhabitants, therefore, induced by their situation to attend to maritime affairs, were further led to employ their skill and power by sea, in endeavouring to establish themselves in more favored countries, or, at least, to draw from them by plunder, what they could not obtain in their own.

We have already mentioned the maritime expeditions of the Saxons, which struck terror into the Romans, during the decline of their empire.  The other Scandinavian nations were acted on by the same causes and motives.  Neglecting the peaceful art of agriculture, inured to the sea from their earliest years, and the profession and practice of piracy being regarded as actually honourable by them, it is no wonder that their whole lives were spent in planning or executing maritime expeditions.  Their internal wars also, by depriving many of their power or their property, compelled them to seek abroad that which they had lost at home.  No sooner had a prince reached his eighteenth year, than he was entrusted by his father with a fleet; and by means of it he was ordered and expected to add to his glory and his wealth, by plunder and victory.  Lands were divided into certain portions, and from each portion a certain number of ships were to be fully equipped for sea.  Their vessels, as well as themselves, were admirably adapted to the grand object of their lives; the former were well supplied with stones, arrows, and strong ropes, with which they overset small vessels, and with grappling irons to board them; and every individual was skilful in swimming.  Each band possessed its own ports, magazines, &c.  Their ships were at first small, being only a kind of twelve-oared barks; they were afterwards so much enlarged, that they were capable of containing 100 or 120 men.

It is not our intention to notice the piratical expeditions of Scandinavians, except so far as they tended to discovery, or commerce, or were productive of permanent effects.  Among the first countries to which they directed themselves, and where they settled permanently, were England and Ireland; the result of their settlement in England was the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon dominion power in that kingdom; the result of their expeditions to Ireland was their settlement on its eastern coasts.  In the middle of the ninth century, the native Irish had been driven by them into the central and western parts of the country, while the Scandinavian conquerors, under the appellation of Ostmen,