er of
readers."[22]

To mark the progress away from the old conception of unmitigated
brutality these words of Dasent stand here:[23] "The faults of these
Norsemen were the faults of their time; their virtues they possessed in
larger measure than the rest of their age, and thus when Christianity
had tamed their fury, they became the torch-bearers of civilization; and
though the plowshare of Destiny, when it planted them in Europe,
uprooted along its furrow many a pretty flower of feeling in the lands
which felt the fury of these Northern conquerers, their energy and
endurance gave a lasting temper to the West, and more especially to
England, which will wear so long as the world wears, and at the same
time implanted principles of freedom which shall never be rooted out.
Such results are a compensation for many bygone sorrows."

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875).

In 1874, Charles Kingsley visited America and delivered some lectures.
Among these was one entitled "The First Discovery of America." This
interests us here because it displays an appreciation, if not a deep
knowledge, of Icelandic literature. In it the lecturer commended to
Longfellow's attention a ballad sung in the Faroes, begging him to
translate it some day, "as none but he can translate it." "It is so sad,
that no tenderness less exquisite than his can prevent its being
painful; and at least in its _denouement_, so naive, that no purity less
exquisite than his can prevent its being dreadful."[24] Later in the
lecture he commends to his hearers the _Heimskringla_ of Snorri
Sturluson, the "Homer of the North."[25]

Speaking of the elements that mingled to produce the British character,
Kingsley says: "In manners as well as in religion, the Norse were
humanized and civilized by their contact with the Celts, both in
Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valor, intellect, imagination:
but the Celt had that which the burly, angular Norse character, however
deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature,
tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining
with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of
character which have produced, in Ireland and in Scotland, two schools
of lyric poetry second to none in the world."[26] Over the page,
Kingsley has this to say: "For they were a sad people, those old Norse
forefathers of ours."[27] Humorous and sad are not inconsistent words in
these sentences;