urgently, November 24th, "Yours of the 20th came to hand only yesterday. I cannot consent to the suppression of the Nattvardsbarnen. I accordingly wrote to Owen to-day to suspend the destruction of the condemned sheets. .. At least let me have a look at them. I am a pretty good judge, and identify myself a good deal with your success. I might add lots of quotations from your letters, showing how enchanted you were with the poem, and how much interest you took in the translation, and how wrong and inconsistent it is to reject it now in a fit of panic. I suppose you have read it to the Hater-of-horses-and-of-Jean-Paul [Felton], as you did The Skeleton in Armor. I regard this as an extremely serious matter, the excluding these children from the supper of glory which awaits your new volume, and the other children of your fancy which it contains."

Mr. Longfellow reconsidered his decision and included the poem in the volume. He provided it with an introduction describing rural life in Sweden, which he had previously used in his article on Frithiof's Saga. In subsequent editions of his poems he removed it from its place as an introduction to The Children of the Lord's Supper, and made it a long note to the poem. It will be found as such in its place at the end of this volume. In the same introduction, Mr. Longfellow made the following remarks regarding his translation:

"The translation is literal, perhaps to a fault. In no instance have I done the author a wrong by introducing into his work any supposed improve

ments or embellishments of my own. I have preserved even the measure, that inexorable hexameter, in which, it must be confessed, the motions of the English muse are not unlike those of a prisoner dancing to the music of his chains; and perhaps, as Dr. Johnson said of the dancing dog, 'the wonder is not that she should do it so well but that she should do it at all.'"

PASSAGES FROM FRITHIOF'S SAGA.

BY ESAIAS TEGNÉR.

In his paper in Drift-Wood entitled Frithiof's Saga, Mr. Longfellow gave a running synopsis of the poem illustrated by translations of several of the passages. The following are the larger and more complete of these passages.

I.

FRITHIOF'S HOMESTEAD.

THREE miles extended around the fields of the homestead, on three sides

Valleys and mountains and hills, but on the fourth side was the ocean.

Birch woods crowned the summits, but down the slope of the hillsides

Flourished the golden corn, and man-high was waving the rye-field.

Lakes, full many in number, their mirror held up for the mountains,

Held for the forests up, in whose depths the highhorned reindeers

Had their kingly walk, and drank of a hundred brooklets.

But in the valleys widely around, there fed on the greensward

Herds with shining hides and udders that longed for the milk-pail.

'Mid these scattered, now here and now there, were numberless flocks of

Sheep with fleeces white, as thou seest the whitelooking stray clouds,

Flock-wise spread o'er the heavenly vault, when it bloweth in spring-time.

Coursers two times twelve, all mettlesome, fast fettered storm-winds,

Stamping stood in the line of stalls, and tugged at their fodder.

Knotted with red were their manes, and their hoofs all white with steel shoes.

Th' banquet-hall, a house by itself, was timbered of hard fir.

Not five hundred men (at ten times twelve to the hundred *)

Filled up the roomy hall, when assembled for drinking, at Yule-tide.

Thorough the hall, as long as it was, went a table of holm-oak,

Polished and white, as of steel; the columns twain of the High-seat

Stood at the end thereof, two gods carved out of an elm-tree;

Odin † with lordly look, and Frey ‡ with the sun on his frontlet.

Lately between the two, on a bear-skin (the skin it was coal-black,

Scarlet-red was the throat, but the paws were shodden with silver),

Thorsten sat with his friends, Hospitality sitting with Gladness.

* An old fashion of reckoning in the North.

+ Odin, the All-father; the Jupiter of the Scandinavian mythology. Frey, the god of Fertility; the Bacchus of the North.

Oft, when the moon through the cloud-rack flew, related the old man

Wonders from distant lands he had seen, and cruises of Vikings

*

Far away on the Baltic, and Sea of the West, and the White Sea.

Hushed sat the listening bench, and their glances hung on the graybeard's

Lips, as a bee on the rose; but the Scald was thinking of Brage,†

Where, with his silver beard, and runes on his tongue, he is seated

Under the leafy beech, and tells a tradition by Mimer's

Ever-murmuring wave, himself a living tradi

tion.

Midway the floor (with thatch was it strewn) burned ever the fire-flame

Glad on its stone-built hearth; and thorough the wide-mouthed smoke-flue

Looked the stars, those heavenly friends, down into the great hall.

Round the walls, upon nails of steel, were hanging in order

Breastplate and helmet together, and here and there among them

Downward lightened a sword, as in winter evening a star shoots.

More than helmets and swords the shields in the hall were resplendent,

*The old pirates of the North.

† Brage, the god of Song; the Scandinavian Apollo.

Mimer, the Giant, who possessed the Well of Wisdom, under one of the roots of the Ash Igdrasil.