but fierce struggle with the famous Iconoclasts, an image worship was established and consecrated by bulls and canons, which, in whatever light it is regarded, differed in no respect, except in the names of its objects, from that which had existed for so many ages as the chief characteristic of the religious faith of the Gentiles.

This uncontrollable tendency to what has been called in one word Anthropomorphism, or a passion for representing the Infinite and the Invisible in human shape, is a striking feature in the works of the Greek and Latin Classic Poets, and of those of modern Italy; for it is always in the poetry of a nation that we are to look for an expression of the genuine feelings and opinions of the people, as they exist in the very constitution of the national character. In almost all the great poets of whom we are speaking, the inability to spiritualize and the power to paint seem in equal proportions; and though it be true that on the given plan of the representations of the regions of the dead in the Eneid and the Divine Comedy, - Æneas in the first, and Dante himself in the last, being supposed eyewitnesses therein, a minuteness of detail is dramatically proper, and constitutes that verisimilitude, which is so charming; yet that they, and especially that the Christian Dante, should adopt such a mode of describing that unknown world of shades, and, having adopted it, should execute it with such

a depth of body and intensity of color throughout, is as clearly deducible from, and as strongly characteristic of, the national propension to materialism of a certain kind, as the very different conception of the same awful subject by Milton, is of the predominance of a contrary tendency in a people of Northern origin.

For the converse of what has been just said of the Greeks and Italians, is generally true of all the nations of Scandinavian or Teutonic descent. A rigorous climate, a cloudy atmosphere, immense forests, and the barrier of a frozen or a stormy ocean, made these as habitually the dwellers in caves and woods as those were in the open air. They sought their refuge for months from the unlovely face of nature in huts* under ground, and their joys in a winter of intoxication. The most

darksome recess of the forest was the abode of the Druic priest, where the warrior gods of Odin's race were not unfrequently appeased by human sacrifices. Too rude and impatient to cultivate the builder's or the sculptor's art, they had no temples but interwoven foliage, nor altars but the raised

* Solent et subterraneos specus aperire, eosque multo insuper fimo onerant, suffugium hiemi. - Tacit. Germ. 16.

Si indulseris ebrietati, suggerendo quantum concupiscunt, haud minus facile vitiis, quam armis, vincentur. - Tacit. Germ. 23. Nemora alta remotis

turf. They prayed to or consulted their gods in gloom and in fear, but they did not represent them by any image or symbol.* From the earliest period in which we know any thing certain of this vast nation, the Germans of the Roman Empire, down to the present hour, whithersoever it has migrated, and in the exact proportion in which it has preserved the purity of its Northern blood, we may trace in its manners first, and subsequently in its literature, a comparative neglect of the common face of nature, a fondness for a shadowy and unreal romance, a seeking after the abstract and the mysterious, and a passion for descending into the depths of the spiritual being of man. Hence, if there be fewer pictures for the mind's eye in the Northern poetry, it speaks more awfully to the conscience and to the affections of humanity, than that of Italy or of Greece.

III. But neither the spirit of the old Paganism, nor that strong addiction to objects of sense, of which we have just been speaking, so strikingly distinguishes the classic writers from those of modern Europe, as their conception and expression of the passion of Love. The origin and growth of that gentle yet almost despotic empire which the

* Ceterum, nec cohibere parietibus Deos, neque in ullam humani oris speciem adsimulare, ex magnitudine cœlestium arbitrantur ; lucos ac nemora consecrant, Deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident. Germ. 9.

weaker and the fairer sex at present exercises over the stronger, in every civilized country in the world, are, for the greater part, the work of Christianity and Chivalry. The converse of such a state of feeling is a uniform characteristic of the writings of the Greeks and Romans, though in different degrees, and still remains so of the manners of all those nations on which the light of the Gospel has not yet shone. By the holy religion of Christ polygamy and concubinage were forbidden, and marriage became indissoluble and more honorable; by it women were declared equal objects of its precepts and joint-heirs of its promises, and love and care became the acknowledged rights of a Christian wife at the hands of her husband. Beyond this, however, it did not immediately operate. Indeed, what with an increasing barbarism of manners and the constant pestilence of a corrupt and corrupting priesthood, very much of that mysterious dignity which the history as well as the spirit of the Gospel had conferred on women was destroyed; when in consequence of an event among the most singular and wonderful in the annals of mankind, it revived in superadded splendor, never thenceforth to be obscured but in an eclipse of Christian civilization itself. That event was the first Crusade. Out of the habits of individual combats, and the disorganized state of society consequent upon the breaking-up of those vast Oriental armaments,

sprung that romantic police, known by the name of Knight-errantry, or more generally, of Chivalry. To succour the distressed and to defend the weak in all cases was the bounden duty of a knight; but more especially was he sworn to relieve, at any hazard, a woman from difficulty, and to protect her from danger or insult at the expense of his life. Hence, and from the ground of that reverential attention to women, common to all the nations of Northern origin,* (and which operates, even in the present day, to produce that more august conception of the wedded union which so widely and so honorably distinguishes the English, Dutch, German, Norwegian, and other Northern races from the Italians,) grew up, on the part of the knight, and subsequently of the gentleman, who is his successor, that respectful courtesy, that digni- . fied submission to all women in general, as such, which when kindled into passion for some one in particular, becomes the sacred and enlivening flame, by which every faculty of the mind is developed, every affection of the heart purified, and which alone can promise happiness on earth, by a satisfaction of the instinctive appetite in the light and under the sanction of a spiritual union. So pervading has the combined action of Christianity and

* Inesse quinetiam (fœminis) sanctum aliquid et providum putant; nec aut consilia earum aspernantur, aut responsa negligunt. Germ. 8.