sank at once into poverty of zero,--one midnight in his own
cellar, in the course of that bad business. Hakon was a great Politician
in his time; and succeeded in many things before he lost Largs. Snorro's
death by murder had happened about twenty years before Hakon's by broken
heart. He is called Hakon the Old, though one finds his age was
but fifty-nine, probably a longish life for a Norway King. Snorro's
narrative ceases when Snorro himself was born; that is to say, at the
threshold of King Sverrir; of whose exploits and doubtful birth it is
guessed by some that Snorro willingly forbore to speak in the hearing of
such a Hakon.

CHAPTER XVI. EPILOGUE.

Haarfagr's kindred lasted some three centuries in Norway; Sverrir's
lasted into its third century there; how long after this, among the
neighboring kinships, I did not inquire. For, by regal affinities,
consanguinities, and unexpected chances and changes, the three
Scandinavian kingdoms fell all peaceably together under Queen Margaret,
of the Calmar Union (A.D. 1397); and Norway, incorporated now with
Denmark, needed no more kings.

The History of these Haarfagrs has awakened in me many thoughts: Of
Despotism and Democracy, arbitrary government by one and self-government
(which means no government, or anarchy) by all; of Dictatorship with
many faults, and Universal Suffrage with little possibility of
any virtue. For the contrast between Olaf Tryggveson, and a
Universal-Suffrage Parliament or an "Imperial" Copper Captain has, in
these nine centuries, grown to be very great. And the eternal Providence
that guides all this, and produces alike these entities with their
epochs, is not its course still through the great deep? Does not it
still speak to us, if we have ears? Here, clothed in stormy enough
passions and instincts, unconscious of any aim but their own
satisfaction, is the blessed beginning of Human Order, Regulation,
and real Government; there, clothed in a highly different, but again
suitable garniture of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as
to real aim, is the accursed-looking ending (temporary ending) of Order,
Regulation, and Government;--very dismal to the sane onlooker for the
time being; not dismal to him otherwise, his hope, too, being steadfast!
But here, at any rate, in this poor Norse theatre, one looks with
interest on the first transformation, so mysterious and abstruse, of
human Chaos into something of articulate Cosmos; witnesses t