ants of Northern Europe.
Scarcely was this effected when the sources of history began to be
poisoned. At the end of the eleventh century Saemund Sigfusson, a
Christian priest, gathered the popular and hitherto unwritten histories
of the North into what is called the "Elder Edda"; and he was satisfied
with adding to his compilation the corrective of a Christian hymn. A
hundred years later there was made another collection of the native
histories; but the principle which I have mentioned, having had a longer
time to operate, now displayed its effects still more clearly. In this
second collection, which is known by the name of the 'Younger Edda,'
there is an agreeable mixture of Greek, Jewish, and Christian fables;
and for the first time in the Scandinavian annals, we meet with the
widely diffused fiction of a Trojan descent.

If by way of further illustration we turn to other parts of the world,
we shall find a series of facts confirming this view. We shall find that
in those countries where there has been no change of religion, history
is more trustworthy and connected than in those countries where such a
change has taken place. In India, Brahmanism, which is still supreme,
was established at so early a period that its origin is lost in the
remotest antiquity. The consequence is that the native annals have never
been corrupted by any new superstition, and the Hindus are possessed of
historic traditions more ancient than can be found among any other
Asiatic people. In the same way, the Chinese have for upwards of two
thousand years preserved the religion of Fo, which is a form of
Buddhism. In China, therefore, though the civilization has never been
equal to that of India, there is a history, not indeed as old as the
natives would wish us to believe, but still stretching back to several
centuries before the Christian era, from whence it has been brought down
to our own times in an uninterrupted succession. On the other hand, the
Persians, whose intellectual development was certainly superior to that
of the Chinese, are nevertheless without any authentic information
respecting the early transactions of their ancient monarchy. For this I
can see no possible reason except the fact that Persia, soon after the
promulgation of the Koran, was conquered by the Mohammedans, who
completely subverted the Parsee religion and thus interrupted the stream
of the national traditions. Hence it is that, putting aside the myths of
the Zendav