principles of morality better worked out, and right and wrong kept so steadily in sight.” (p. lxii.) We cannot agree with him in this appreciation of the moral tone of the stories, many of which certainly speak ill for the honesty and manliness of the race among which they have been for centuries cherished household-treasures.  For in a large proportion of those that have a successful hero, he obtains his success either by lying or some kind of deceit or treachery, by stealing, or by imposing upon the credulity or feebleness of age; and of those in which the hero is himself victorious over oppression, we are not able to recollect one which exhibits the beauty of moderation and magnanimity, not to say of Christian charity and forgiveness.  Mr. Dasent mentions it as an admirable trait of the tales, that, “in the midst of every difficulty and danger, arises that old Norse feeling of making the best of everything and keeping a good face to the foe.”  Certainly the heroes of these tales do make the best of everything, but they are not at all scrupulous as to their way of making it; and they do also keep a good face to the foe, when (often by craft, theft, or violence) they have obtained some implement or other gift of supernatural power which places their opponents entirely at their mercy and with no risk to themselves.  But of a manful contest on equal terms, or of a victory obtained over tyrannous power by a union of patience, boldness, and honest skill, or even by undegrading stratagem, the collection affords no instance that we remember.

The story of Shortshanks may be taken as a fair, and even a favorable example of the tone of these Norse tales.  Shortshanks and King Sturdy are twin brothers, who set out to seek their fortunes within a few minutes of their birth, driven thereto by a precocious perception of the res angustae domi.  They part at two roads almost immediately, and the story follows the fortunes of Shortshanks, the younger; for in these miniature romances the elder is, as usual, continually snubbed, and the younger is always the great man.  Shortshanks has not gone far before he meets “an old crook-backed hag,” who has only one eye; and he commences his career by gouging out or “snapping up” the single comfort of this helpless creature.  To get her eye back again, she gives Shortshanks a sword that will put a whole army to flight; and he, charmed with the result of his first manoeuvre, puts it in practice successively upon two other decrepit, half-blind women, who, to get their eyes again, give him, one, a ship that can sail over fresh water and salt water and over high hills and deep dales, the other, the art how to brew a hundred lasts of malt at one strike.  The ship takes him to the king’s palace, on arriving at which he puts his vessel in his pocket, when he summons his craft to his aid, and gets a place in the king’s kitchen to carry wood and water for the maid.  The king’s daughter has for some inscrutable reason been promised