While the controversy was going on in England, knowing the receptive and impartial mind of Mr. Gladstone, and having been several times the recipient, in years past, of his kind hospitality, and remembering the interest he had taken in my African travels, I took the liberty of addressing to him a request for his opinion in regard to the position I had taken. Mr. Gladstone, who was then in Oxford for the purpose of delivering a lecture on Homer, replied the same day. I append his letter:
You have done me great honor by appealing to me, but I fear your appeal is to a person prepossessed and ignorant.
My prepossessions are on your side. But I have not yet been able, although very desirous, to examine the argument on your side as it deserves, nor that of your adversaries.
I am a man of _Scotch_ blood only, half Highland, and half Lowland, near the Border. A branch of my family settled in Scandinavia, in the first half, I think, of the seventeenth century.
When I have been in Norway, or Denmark, or among Scandinavians, I have felt something like a cry of nature from within, asserting (credibly or otherwise) my nearness to them. In Norway I have never felt as if in a foreign country; and this, I have learned, is a very common experience with British travellers.
The love of freedom in combination with settled order, which we hope is characteristic of this country, is, I apprehend, markedly characteristic of Norway and of Denmark. I have not spoken of Sweden, simply because I have not been there.
The ethnography of northern and insular Scotland, down even to the Isle of Man, and the history, seem to show a very broad and durable connection.
Still I cannot call these more than feeble generalities. I earnestly hope, when I am a little more free, that I may be able to get some real hold of the subject.
I think a good deal of the argument suggested by our fishing population, and by the _curious_ persistency with which, in some districts, Scandinavian terminations have been preserved.
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XIV HAKI’S BURNING JOURNEY TO 139 VALHALLA
XVII THE INHERITANCE FEAST OF 167 HJORVARD
XVIII IVAR SPURNS STARKAD’S 176 INDEMNITY
XXIII YNGVI’S THREE BEAUTIFUL 221 DAUGHTERS