on the mountain-skull of Skrymir were types and forerunners of the
later feats of the Teutonic race, performed on the rough, shaggy,
wilderness face of this Western hemisphere, channelling it with watery
highways, tunnelling and levelling its mountains, and strewing its
surface with cities. The old Eddas and Voluspas of the North are full
of significant lore for the sons of the Northmen, wherever their lot is
cast. There they will find, that, in colonizing and humanizing the face
of the world, in zoning it with railroads and telegraph-wires, in
bridging its oceans with clipper-ships, and steamboats, and in weaving,
forging, and fabricating for it amid the clang of iron mechanisms, they
are only following out the original bent of the race, and travelling in
the wake of Thor the Hammerer.

While the Grecian and Roman myths are made familiar by our
school-books, it is to be regretted that the wild and glorious mythic
lore of our ancient kindred is neglected. To that you must go, if you
would learn whence came

"the German's inward sight,
And slow-sure Britain's secular might,"

and it may be added, the Anglo-American's unsurpassed practical energy,
skill, and invincible love of freedom. From the fountains of the
ash-tree Yggdrasil flowed these things. Some of the greatest of modern
Teutonic writers have gone back to these fountains, flowing in these
wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence.
Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the
old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which
had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too
much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the
innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp
thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which
flow fast by its roots. In an especial manner has the German branch of
the Teuton kindred turned back to those old musical well-springs
bubbling up in the dim North, and they have been strengthened and
inspired by the pilgrimage. "Under the root, which stretches out
towards the Joetuns, there is Mimir's Well, in which Wisdom and Wit lie
hidden." Longfellow, too, has drunk of Mimir's Well, and hence the rare
charm and witchery of his "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and "Golden
Legend." This well in the North is better than Castalian fount for the
children of the North.

How much more genial and l