and their being often obliged to sit long in wet woollen clothes, they are greatly exposed to cutaneous diseases. They are also frequently attacked with obstinate coughs and pulmonary complaints, by which perhaps more are carried off annually than by any other disease.

It has been said, that, in general, the Icelanders are of a sullen and melancholy disposition; but, after paying the strictest attention to their appearance and habits, I must pronounce the statement inaccurate, and one which could only have been made by those who have had little or no intercourse with that people. On the contrary, I have been surprised at the degree of cheerfulness and vivacity which I found to prevail among them, and that not unfrequently under circumstances of considerable external depression and want. Their predominant character is that of unsuspecting frankness, pious contentment, and a steady liveliness of temperament, combined with a strength of intellect and acuteness of mind seldom to be met with in other parts of the world. They have also been noted for the almost unconquerable attachment which they feel to their native island. With all their priva tions, and exposed, as they are, to numerous dangers from the operation of physical causes, they live under the practical influence of one of their

common. proverbs: Island er hinn besta land sem solinn skinnar uppá. "Iceland is the best land on which the sun shines."

In the persons, habits, and customs of the present inhabitants of Iceland, we are furnished with a faithful picture of those exhibited by their Scandinavian ancestors. They adhere

most rigidly to whatever has once been adopted as a national custom, and the few innovations that have been introduced by foreigners are scarcely visible beyond the immediate vicinity of their factories. Their language, dress, and mode of life, have been invariably the same during a period of nine centuries; whilst those of other nations have been subjected to numerous vicissitudes, according to the diversity of external circumstances, and the caprices of certain leading individuals, whose influence has been sufficiently powerful to impart a new tone to the society in which they moved. Habituated from their earliest years to hear of the character of their ancestors, and the asylum which their native island afforded to the sciences, when the rest of Europe was immersed in ignorance and barbarism, the Icelanders naturally possess a high degree of national feeling, and there is a certain dignity and boldness of carriage observable in numbers of the peasants, which at once

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indicates a strong sense of propriety and independence.

The Icelandic is justly regarded as the standard of the grand northern dialect of the Gothic language. While the Swedish and Danish, and even the Norwegian, which is a kind of middle dialect, have been more or less subject to the influence of the Teutonic or German branch, that, originally spoken in Scandinavia, has been preserved in all its purity in Iceland. In the middle ages, it was known by the name of Dönsk Tunga, or the Danish Tongne; the Icelanders at first called it Norræna, because they had brought it along with them from Norway, which name pretty much resembles that of Norns, or Norse, by which the corrupt dialect, spoken till within these few years in some parts of Orkney, has been designated; and, it was not till after it had ceased to be spoken on the continent, that it assumed the name of Icelandic. The remoteness of the island, and the little intercourse which its inhabitants have maintained with the rest of the world, have effectually secured the purity and originality of this ancient language; and it is a curious fact, that while our ablest antiquaries are often puzzled, in endeavouring to decipher certain words and phrases in writings which date their origin only a few centuries

back; there is not a peasant, nor indeed, scarcely a servant girl in Iceland, who is not capable of reading with ease the most ancient documents extant on the island.

The early and successful application of the Icelanders to the study of the sciences forms a perfect anomaly in the history of literature. At a period when the darkest gloom was spread over the European horizon, the inhabitants of this comparatively barren island, near the north pole, were cultivating the arts of poetry and history; and laying up stores of knowledge, which were not merely to supply posterity with data respecting the domestic and political affairs of their native country, but were also destined to furnish very ample and satisfactory information on a great multiplicity of important points connected with the history of other nations. To this a wonderful combination of circumstances proved favourable. The Norwegians, who first went over to Iceland, were sprung from some of the most distinguished families in the land of their nativity. They had been accustomed from their infancy to listen to the traditionary tale of the deeds of other years; they had frequented the public assemblies, where they saw the value and importance of knowledge; and, in the course of their numerous piratical expeditions

and invasions, they had obtained an intimate ac quaintance with the situation, politics, history, &c. of the different countries of Europe. Being in the habit of clothing all events of any importance in poetic language, an accurate knowledge of these events was secured to posterity, while the share that some of themselves, or their immediate ancestors had had in many of them, naturally excited a desire to recite them in the family circle; and the undisturbed enjoyment of tranquillity, during a long winter of eight months continuance, afforded them the best opportunities of bending their attention to the study of the different branches of literature.

The art of writing* was first introduced into Iceland by Isleif, Bishop of Skalholt, about the year 1057; and the oldest monuments which we have of written composition, are the works of Ari Frode, who flourished about the same period, After the introduction of Christianity, several of the Icelanders went to France and Germany to prosecute their studies at the best universities of the age; but it is worthy of notice, that the writer just mentioned, and Snorro Sturluson, two of the

This is to be understood only of the regular use of the Latin characters; but it is evident from various parts of the Edda, and also of the Sagas, that the Runic characters were previously used for inscriptions on stones, &c.