Popular Tales from the Norse | Page 5

motion from their ancient seats. Whether
impelled by famine or internal strife, starved out like other nationalities
in recent times, or led on by adventurous chiefs, whose spirit chafed at
the narrowness of home, certain it is that they left that home and began
a wandering westwards, which only ceased when it reached the Atlantic
and the Northern Ocean. Nor was the fate of those they left behind less
strange. At some period almost as remote as, but after, that at which the
wanderers for Europe started, the remaining portion of the stock, or a
considerable offshoot from it, turned their faces east, and passing the
Indian Caucasus, poured through the defiles of Affghanistan, crossed
the plain of the Five Rivers, and descended on the fruitful plains of
India. The different destiny of these stocks has been wonderful indeed.
Of those who went west, we have only to enumerate the names under
which they appear in history--Celts, Greeks, Romans, Teutons,
Slavonians--to see and to know at once that the stream of this migration
has borne on its waves all that has become most precious to man. To
use the words of Max Müller: 'They have been the prominent actors in

the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all
the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They
have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature
and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the
principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with
Semitic and Mongolian races, these Aryan nations have become the
rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the
world together by the chains of civilization, commerce, and religion.'
We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring, they have not
been obstinate and self-willed; they have been distinguished from all
other nations, and particularly from their elder brothers whom they left
behind, by their common sense, by their power of adapting themselves
to all circumstances, and by making the best of their position; above all,
they have been teachable, ready to receive impressions from without,
and, when received, to develop them. To show the truth of this, we
need only observe, that they adopted Christianity from another race, the
most obstinate and stiff-necked the world has ever seen, who, trained
under the Old Dispensation to preserve the worship of the one true God,
were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under the New,
and, rejecting their birth-right, suffered their inheritance to pass into
other hands.
Such, then, has been the lot of the Western branch, of the younger
brother, who, like the younger brother whom we shall meet so often in
these Popular Tales, went out into the world, with nothing but his good
heart and God's blessing to guide him; and now has come to all honour
and fortune, and to be a king, ruling over the world. He went out and
did. Let us see now what became of the elder brother, who stayed at
home some time after his brother went out, and then only made a short
journey. Having driven out the few aboriginal inhabitants of India with
little effort, and following the course of the great rivers, the Eastern
Aryans gradually established themselves all over the peninsula; and
then, in calm possession of a world of their own, undisturbed by
conquest from without, and accepting with apathy any change of
dynasty among their rulers, ignorant of the past and careless of the
future, they sat down once for all and thought--thought not of what they
had to do here, that stern lesson of every-day life which neither men

nor nations can escape if they are to live with their fellows, but how
they could abstract themselves entirely from their present existence,
and immerse themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on the future.
Whatever they may have been during their short migration and
subsequent settlement, it is certain that they appear in the
Vedas--perhaps the earliest collection which the world possesses--as a
nation of philosophers. Well may Professor Müller compare the Indian
mind to a plant reared in a hot-house, gorgeous in colour, rich in
perfume, precocious and abundant in fruit; it may be all this, 'but will
never be like the oak, growing in wind and weather, striking its roots
into real earth, and stretching its branches into real air, beneath the stars
and sun of Heaven'; and well does he also remark, that a people of this
peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the history
of the world; nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas
could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and moral
character of