good or ill, for friend or for foe; who knew what his own end would be, though quite powerless to avert it; and when it came, laid him down to his rest, and never uttered sound or groan, though the flames roared loud around him?  Nor are the minor characters less carefully drawn, the scolding tongue of Thrain’s first wife, the mischief-making Thiostolf with his pole-axe, which divorced Hallgerda’s first husband, Hrut’s swordsmanship, Asgrim’s dignity, Gizur’s good counsel, Snorri’s common sense and shrewdness, Gudmund’s grandeur, Thorgeir’s thirst for fame, Kettle’s kindliness, Ingialld’s heartiness, and, though last not least, Bjorn’s boastfulness, which his gudewife is ever ready to cry down—­are all sketched with a few sharp strokes which leave their mark for once and for ever on the reader’s mind.  Strange! were it not that human nature is herself in every age, that such forbearance and forgiveness as is shown by Njal and Hauskuld and Hall, should have shot up out of that social soil, so stained and steeped with the blood-shedding of revenge.  Revenge was the great duty of Icelandic life, yet Njal is always ready to make up a quarrel, though he acknowledges the duty, when he refuses in his last moments to outlive his children, whom he feels himself unable to revenge.  The last words of Hauskuld, when he was foully assassinated through the tale-bearing of Mord, were, “God help me and forgive you”; nor did the beauty of a Christian spirit ever shine out more brightly than in Hall, who, when his son Ljot, the flower of his flock, fell full of youth, and strength, and promise, in chance-medley at the battle on the Thingfield, at once for the sake of peace gave up the father’s and the freeman’s dearest rights, those of compensation and revenge, and allowed his son to fall unatoned in order that peace might be made.  This struggle between the principle of an old system now turned to evil, and that of a new state of things which was still fresh and good, between heathendom as it sinks into superstition, and Christianity before it has had time to become superstitious, stands strongly forth in the latter part of the Saga; but as yet the new faith can only assert its forbearance and forgiveness in principle.  It has not had time, except in some rare instances, to bring them into play in daily life.  Even in heathen times such a deed as that by which Njal met his death, to hem a man in within his house and then to burn it and him together, to choke a freeman, as Skarphedinn says, like a fox in his earth, was quite against the free and open nature of the race; and though instances of such foul deeds occur besides those two great cases of Blundkettle and Njal, still they were always looked upon as atrocious crimes and punished accordingly.  No wonder, therefore, then that Flosi, after the Change of Faith, when he makes up his mind to fire Njal’s house, declares the deed to be one for which they would have to answer heavily before God, “seeing that we are Christian men ourselves"....