ormans against the Spanish Moors, hence their
alliances with the Catalans, where a Norman impression yet remains in
architecture; but, as in Sicily, these barbarians, unrecruited from
the North, soon died away, or were assimilated as usual with the more
polished people, whom they had subdued by mere superiority of brute
force.'

If the Moors called the Norsemen Al Madjus, which according to our author
signifies Gog and Magog, the Norsemen retorted by a far more definite and
expressive nickname; this was Blue-skins or Bluemen, doubtless in
allusion to the livid countenances of the Moors. The battles between the
Moors and the Northmen are frequently mentioned in the Sagas, none of
which, however, are of higher antiquity than the eleventh century. In
none of these chronicles do we find any account of this raid upon Seville
in 844; it was probably a very inconsiderable affair magnified by the
Moors and their historians. Snorre speaks of the terrible attack of
Sigurd, surnamed the Jorsal wanderer, or Jerusalem pilgrim, upon Lisbon
and Cintra, both of which places he took, destroying the Moors by
hundreds. He subsequently 'harried' the southern coasts of Spain on his
voyage to Constantinople. But this occurred some two hundred years after
the affair of Seville mentioned in the Handbook. It does not appear that
the Norse ever made any serious attempt to establish their power in
Spain; had they done so we have no doubt that they would have succeeded.
We entertain all due respect for the courage and chivalry of the Moors,
especially those of Cordova, but we would have backed the Norse,
especially the pagan Norse, against the best of them. The Biarkemal
would soon have drowned the Moorish 'Lelhies.'

'Thou Har, who grip'st thy foeman
Right hard, and Rolf the bowman,
And many, many others,
The forky lightning's brothers,
Wake--not for banquet table,
Wake--not with maids to gabble,
But wake for rougher sporting,
For Hildur's bloody courting.'

Under the head of La Mancha our author has much to say on the subject of
Don Quixote; and to the greater part of what he says we yield our
respectful assent. His observations upon the two principal characters in
that remarkable work display much sound as well as original criticism.
We cannot however agree with him in preferring the second part, which we
think a considerable falling off from the first. We should scarcely
believ