The ice and rime to the north represent the age of ice and snow. Muspelheim was the torrid country of the south, over which the clouds could not yet form in consequence of the heat-Africa.

But it can not last forever. The clouds disappear; the floods find their way back to the ocean; nature begins to decorate once more the scarred and crushed face of the world. But where is the human race? The "Younger Edda" tells us :

"During the conflagration caused by Surt's fire, a woman by the name of Lif and a man named Lifthraser lie concealed in Hodmimer's hold, or forest. The dew of the dawn serves them for food, and so great a race shall spring from them, that their descendants shall soon spread over the whole earth."*

The "Elder Edda" says:

"Lif and Lifthraser

Will lie hid

In Hodmimer's-holt;

The morning dew

They have for food.

From them are the races descended."

Holt is a grove, or forest, or hold; it was probably a cave. We shall see that nearly all the legends refer to the caves in which mankind escaped from destruction.

This statement,

"From them are the races descended,"

shows that this is not prophecy, but history; it refers to the past, not to the future; it describes not a Day of Judgment to come, but one that has already fallen on the human family.

Two others, of the godlike race, also escaped in some

* "Norse Mythology,” p. 429.

way not indicated; Vidar and Vale are their names. They, too, had probably taken refuge in some cavern.

"Neither the sea nor Surt's fire had harmed them, and they dwell on the plains of Ida, where Asgard was before. Thither come also the sons of Thor, Mode, and Magne, and they have Mjolner. Then come Balder and Hoder from Iel."

Mode and Magne are children of Thor; they belong to the godlike race. They, too, have escaped. Mjolner is Thor's hammer. Balder is the Sun; he has returned from the abode of death, to which the comet consigned him. Hoder is the Night.

All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity reassemble on the plain of Ida-the plain of Vigrid-where the battle was fought. They possess the works of the old civilization, represented by Thor's hammer; and the day and night once more return after the long midnight blackness.

And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated world:

"She sees arise

The second time,

From the sea, the earth,

Completely green.

The cascades fall,

The eagle soars,
From lofty mounts
Pursues its prey."

It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world; the world of flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, high above it all,

while

"Batting the sunny ceiling of the globe
With his dark wings;"

"The wild cataracts leap in glory."

What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pictures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas-the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of the world!

Rome and Greece can not parallel this marvelous story:

"The gods convene
On Ida's plains,

And talk of the powerful
Midgard-serpent;
They call to mind
The Fenris-wolf

And the ancient runes

Of the mighty Odin."

What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of for the next thousand years but this awful, this unparalleled calamity through which the race has passed?

A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having found their way even into the very Bible revered alike of Jew and Christian:

The Edda continues,

"Then again

The wonderful
Golden tablets

Are found in the grass:
In time's morning,
The leader of the gods
And Odin's race

Possessed them."

And what a find was that! This poor remnant of humanity discovers "the golden tablets" of the former

civilization. Doubtless, the inscribed tablets, by which the art of writing survived to the race; for what would tablets be without inscriptions? For they talk of "the ancient runes of mighty Odin," that is, of the runic letters, the alphabetical writing. And we shall see hereafter that this view is confirmed from other sources. There follows a happy age:

"The fields unsown
Yield their growth;
All ills cease.
Balder comes.

Hoder and Balder,

Those heavenly gods,

Dwell together in Odin's halls."

The great catastrophe is past. Man is saved. The

world is once more fair.

Night and day follow around the happy globe.

The sun shines again in heaven. each other in endless revolution Ragnarok is past.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAËTON.

Now let us turn to the mythology of the Latins, as preserved in the pages of Ovid, one of the greatest of the poets of ancient Rome.*

Here we have the burning of the world involved in the myth of Phaeton, son of Phoebus-Apollo-the Sunwho drives the chariot of his father; he can not control the horses of the Sun, they run away with him; they come so near the earth as to set it on fire, and Phaëton is at last killed by Jove, as he killed Typhon in the Greek legends, to save heaven and earth from complete and common ruin.

This is the story of the conflagration as treated by a civilized mind, explained by a myth, and decorated with the flowers and foliage of poetry.

We shall see many things in the narrative of Ovid which strikingly confirm our theory.

Phaëton, to prove that he is really the son of Phoebus, the Sun, demands of his parent the right to drive his chariot for one day. The sun-god reluctantly consents, not without many pleadings that the infatuated and rash. boy would give up his inconsiderate ambition. Phaëton persists. The old man says:

"Even the ruler of vast Olympus, who hurls the ruthless bolts with his terrific right hand, can not guide

"The Metamorphoses," book xi, fable 1.