tion. No man is more sad and troubled at it than old Njal, who loved Hauskuld as a father, and knows by his gift of foresight that this murder will work woe to himself and his house. Hauskuld had married Hildigunna, niece of Flosi, the great chief of Swinefell, a proud and high-spirited dame, as are most of them in this story. Her uncle visits her now, and she receives him well. After the men sat down to meat, she comes in and throws back her hair, and weeps. Flosi comforts her, and says he will follow up her suit to the utmost limit of the law. But that is not enough for the grimspirited widow. She goes and unlocks her chest, and takes out her husband's cloak, Flosi's gift, which she has kept there, all bloody as it was, since the morning of his death. Dinner is just over, and she goes silently up to Flosi and flings it over him rattling with gore, saying that she now gives it back to him, and adjures him by the might of Christ, and by his manhood, to take vengeance for her husband's wounds. Flosi hurls off the cloak back into her lap, calls her "hell-hag," and says "women's counsel "is ever cruel." So stirred was he in spirit that "sometimes' he was blood-red "in the face, and sometimes ashy pale as "withered grass, and sometimes blue as "death." For the brave man now felt that he was bound to take up the part of avenger, and to be relentless against his will. So, when the case comes in due course before the Thing, and a triple fine is awarded in atonement for the good Hauskuld, and it is freely paid. down, the great Flosi spurns the money from him with contemptuous words, and says that Hauskuld shall either be unatoned or be avenged. And Njal fares heavily home with his sons; while Flosi gathers a band of 120 men for an attack on Bergthorsknoll.

Now we hear of portents seen and heard, betokening a dreadful catastrophe at hand. A man looking out on the Lord's-day night sees a fiery ring in the west, and within the ring a rider black as pitch, mounted on a gray horse, who rode hard, and sang with a mighty voice a song of doom. In his hand was a

flaming firebrand, which he hurled into the fells before him, and he vanished in the blaze. And Njal as he sits to meat has a second sight;" the gable wall is down, and the white board before him is one sheet of blood. All thought this strange but Skarphedinn, who bids them not be downcast, nor utter unseemly sounds, so that men might make a story out of them. "For," says the true Norseman, "the most soldierlike of men," "it befits us surely more than "other men to bear us well, and it is

only what is looked for from us." Doesn't that remind one of another Njalson, and his "England expects"?

And now Flosi and his men are at hand, having mustered from far Swinefell on the Lord's-day, and duly "said. their prayers." As they drew near Bergthorsknoll, they tether their horses in a dell, and after the evening is well spent, they go slowly up, keeping close together. Njal stands out of doors in array to meet them, with his sons, and Kari, and his house-carles, in all, about thirty men. Flosi halts his men to take counsel. Njal proposes to retire in doors, against the advice of Skarphedinn, who is unwilling to be stifled in doors like a fox in his earth. Burning houses over people's heads, horrible as it appears to us, was not an uncommon practice then in extreme cases. old man's counsel prevails, Skarphedinn remarking that his father is now "fey," and that it is as well to humour him and be burned with him. Then he said to Kari, "Let us stand by one "another well, brother-in-law, so that "neither parts from the other." "That "I have made up my mind to do," says Kari; "but, if it should be otherwise "doomed-well! then it must be as it "must be, and I shall not be able to "fight against it." "Avenge us and

The

we will avenge thee, if we live after "thee," says Skarphedinn. Kari said so it should be. A pregnant little conversation, embodying in few words the chief points of the Norseman's practical philosophy. Now, the fighting began; and Njal's sons and Kari slay and wound many men with their spears,

while the besiegers could do nothing. Then Flosi says, this will never do, and there is nothing for it but to set fire to the house; "and that is a deed which we "shall have to answer for heavily before "God, since we are Christian men our"selves; but still," he concluded, "we "must take to that counsel."

The description of the burning is terribly graphic and affecting; not a touch of "fine writing" in it, but the perfection of simplicity. Our "Own Correspondents" should study it; their brilliance is very admirable, but this Saga-man beats them to sticks at painting. For he never once looks round to see if we are stunned by his performance; his is fixed on the scene before him: eye his only care is to tell exactly what he sees, not to electrify us by what he says. Let us hear him :

"Then Flosi and his men made a great pile before each of the doors, and then the women folk who were inside began to weep and to wail.

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Njal spoke to them and said, 'Keep up your hearts, nor utter shrieks, for this is but a passing storm, and it will be long before you have another such; and put your faith in God, and believe that he is so merciful that he will not let us burn both in this world and the next.'

"Such words of comfort had he for them all, and others still more strong.

"Now the whole house began to blaze. "Then Flosi went to the door and called out to Njal, and said he would speak with him and Bergthora.

"Now Njal does so, and Flosi said

"I will offer thee, Master Njal, leave to go out, for it is unworthy that thou shouldst burn indoors.'

"I will not go out,' said Njal, for I am an old man, and little fitted to avenge my sons, but I will not live in shame.'

"Then Flosi said to Bergthora"Come thou out, housewife, for I will for no sake burn thee indoors.'

"I was given away to Njal young,' said Bergthora, and I have promised him this, that we would both share the same fate.'

"After that they both went back into the house.

"What counsel shall we now take?' said Bergthora.

"We will go to our bed," says Njal,' and lay us down; I have long been eager for rest.' "Then she said to the boy Thord, Kari's

son

"Thee will I take out, and thou shalt not burn in here.'

"Thou hast promised me this, grandmother,' says the boy, 'that we should never part so long as I wished to be with thee; but methinks it is much better to die with thee and Njal than to live after you.'

"Then she bore the boy to her bed, and Njal spoke to his steward and said

"Now shalt thou see where we lay us down, and how I lay us out, for I mean not to stir an inch hence, whether reek or burning smart me, and so thou wilt be able to guess where to look for our bones.'

"He said he would do so.

"There had been an ox slaughtered, and the hide lay there. Njal told the steward to spread the hide over them, and he did so.

"So there they lay down both of them in their bed, and put the boy between them. Then they signed themselves and the boy with the cross, and gave over their souls into God's hand, and that was the last word that men heard them utter.

Such is the end of Njal and his brave wife. Skarphedinn and Grim likewise perish in the flames; while Kari, by a bold leap from the blazing rafters, contrives to escape unpursued. Flosi and his band stayed by the fire till daylight, when a man comes riding up and tells them that he and his neighbour Bard have met Kari; "and his hair and his 66 upper clothes were burned off him." "Had he any weapons?" asks Flosi. "He had the sword Life-killer,' and one "edge of it was blue with fire, and Bard "and I said that it must have become 66 soft; but he answered thus, that he "would harden it in the blood of the sons of Sigfus and the other Burners.” And right truly did he fulfil his word! How he pursued the Burners, without slackening, by land and sea, till the measure of his vengeance was full: how he and Thorgeir Craggeir, the worthy inheritor of Skarphedinn's "Ogress of War," engaged all odds without fear, and ever came off victorious: how in Orkney, at Earl Sigurd's, in presence of King Sigtrygg of Ireland, and a hall full of warriors, he smote off the head of Gunnar, Lambi's son, so that it spun on the board, and dabbled the earl's clothes with blood, and the noble Flosi excused the deed; how, also, he ended his slayings by knocking off the head of Kol Thorstein's son in a town of Wales as he was telling out silver, the head still counting "ten" as it

rolled off to the counter; how at last he is shipwrecked at Ingolf's head, and goes right up to Swinefell in the storm, to put Flosi's manhood to the proof, and Flosi springs up to meet him and kisses him, and they are for ever reconciled; how Flosi, grown old, puts to sea in a crazy ship, good enough as he thinks for an old and death-doomed man, and is heard of no more, while Kari marries Hildigunna and becomes the head of a great house: all this must be passed over, and much more on which one would like to touch. There

is the great lawsuit against the Burners, all the outs and ins and formalities of which are detailed with singular minuteness. There is also the remarkable and weird episode of the battle of Clontarf, well known in Irish annals, to which Northern heathendom gathered its forces for a last struggle with the champions of the Cross. These interesting things the reader must find and appreciate in the book itself. I hope that I have not done injustice to so unique a work in attempting at all to give any account of its story; I wish only to induce any who have not read it, and who can relish a thing fresh from the bosom of nature, though a nature "stern and wild," to get it and enjoy it for themselves. How the learned and brilliant editor has done his work it is hardly necessary to say: such a subject is not got every day, but such editing is still more rare. The only fault I can find with it is that it leaves

nothing for anybody to say coming after him. Introduction, notes, and appendices are so done as to combine the highest qualities of English prosewriting with a perfect mastery and exhaustion of the whole subject. In speaking of Dr. Dasent's pre-eminent labours in this field, it should not, indeed, be forgotten that his worthy predecessor, Mr. Laing, laid the lovers of Northern literature under deep obligations sixteen years ago by his translation of the Heimskringla, a work of much greater extent than the single Saga of Burnt Njal. But, valuable and interesting as is the chronicle of Sturleson, the Njala has the advantage of being not only of real historical value, but as a story more varied, more sustained in interest, more complete in its structure, than any of the Sagas in the Heimskringla, or, taking Dr. Dasent as authority, than any other Saga that exists.

The editor may well congratulate himself on the comely dress in which he sends forth this strong foster-child of his to the world. Not only has he himself done his part so as to leave nothing to be desired, but all who have contributed to the book-artists, printers, and publishers deserve a hearty word of praise. One of the latter gentlemen has added an index to the work, than which, the editor is safe in saying, a better never was made. Whoever studies the book will thank him for it.

N.

THE year 1861 has had the rare good fortune of witnessing the publication of two remarkable novels-"Elsie Venner"

1 Elsie Venner, a Romance of Destiny. By Oliver Wendell Holmes (Macmillan and Co.). Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe. By George Eliot (William Blackwood and Sons). No. 22.-VOL. IV.

and "Silas Marner." Each is so striking and typical in its way,—they have so many points of analogy, and so many points of contrast,-that it is worth our while to bestow upon them not only our perusal, but a little of our thought.

"Elsie Venner" is strikingly, typi

X

with Balzac's portraits of misers, master-pieces too in their way,-will easily show how far deeper reaches the observation of the English writer. The frightful reality of Balzac's misers' love for their go exercises over us a fascination mixed with disgust, like the pathos of a monkey's agony; there is something so like a human affection in it that we writhe as it were under the fellowship with the lower nature which it implies. In Silas Marner, on the contrary, we never lose the sense of human fellowship with the miser; we feel all through that his love for gold is only the stooping of a human love, not its caricature.

In

Having thús at once grasped hold of our sympathy, the authoress of "Silas Marner" is able pretty nearly to dispense with all adventitious aids. "Elsie Venner," the writer is obliged to appeal to our imagination under its more sensuous sides. He cannot but make "Elsie Venner" young and beautiful, or she would inspire nothing but sheer repulsion. Who could care for such a serpentoid creature if she were old and ugly? We should turn from her with the same alacrity as from her quasi-kinsman, the crotalus itself. So she must be seventeen-"tall and slen"der, but rounded, with a peculiar un"dulation of movement "-"a splendid "scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth;" with "black hair, twisted in heavy braids," and "black, piercing," "diamond" eyes. She must wear 66 a chequered dress of a "curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf, twisted a little fantastically "about her;" she must be for ever "playing listlessly with her gold chain, "coiling and uncoiling it about her "slender wrist, and braiding it with her "long, delicate fingers." Silas Marner, on the contrary, we accept without a murmur as the unprepossessing creature he is from the first nothing more than a pallid young man, with prominent, "sharp-sighted, brown eyes,"-fifteen years older during the main portion of the story-an old man at the last.

Again, it follows almost necessarily

from the choice of his subject, that Mr. Holmes is carried into a world of stage effects, with "striking" scenes and outof-the-way characters; though, to do him justice, he has done his utmost, by artistic treatment, to subdue the melodramatic element in them. Who, indeed, would care for a rattlesnake that didn't bite? Who would care for a quasirattlesnake who should not act out her savagery? In what familiar associations could she be exhibited but with persons having some kind of affinity to herself? Hence the, in himself, melodramatic scamp, Dick Venner, the half-savage old negress, Sophy, as the almost necessary adjuncts to Elsie; hence the otherwise unnatural character of her relations with her father, with Bernard, as required to bring out her own unnaturalness; whilst the fall of Rattlesnake Ledge, though in nowise required by the exigencies of the story, is felt to be quite in keeping with it. In Silas Marner, on the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the quiet consciousness of artistic power which has led the authoress to eschew anything melodramatic, at least in all that touches her hero; which has enabled her to produce as much effect by the mere shadowing of possibilities, as others might by the most direct representation of actual events. The robbing of Silas -which one forefeels as the necessary result of his miserliness-though the nearest approach to a "scene" in the book, is reduced, by the most subtle tameness of treatment, almost into a mere accident. Again, the possibility of Dunsie's reappearance after he has stolen Silas Marner's money, hangs over nearly the whole book, while all the while he is quietly lying at the bottom of the pool with his ill-gotten cash. During the great ball at the Squire's, it is almost impossible not to expect that Godfrey Cass's drunken wife will turn up somehow to claim and punish him; she is actually shown to us on her way for the, purpose, but only to die in the snow, a pauper unidentified. The unjust accusation brought against Marner seems almost