Wieland is not a pleasant book. In one respect it resembles the modern
tale of Wuthering Heights: it has great strength and power, but no
beauty. Unlike that, however, it has an important and salutary moral. It
is a warning to all who tamper with the mind and rashly experiment upon
its religious element. As such, its perusal by the sectarian zealots of
all classes would perhaps be quite as profitable as much of their present
studies.
THE POETRY OF THE NORTH.
THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild and
spirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appears
to have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathen
saga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization.
The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and full
of a rude, untamed energy. It was inspired by exhibitions of power
rather than of beauty. Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel and
ferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliest
tricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge,--very
dangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-
eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers.
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