left his kingdom to his children, and the Norway which he had wooed and won so sternly, enjoyed after his death unwonted peace. In securing her that blessing, Harold Hardrada had the greatest share. He completed what Saint Olaf had only begun, and he succeeded where his half-brother failed. He broke the haughty spirit of the chiefs by his iron will, and stamped out the sparks of that unbridled liberty, which, if uncontrolled, mate heirs to the English crown so long as Edgar Atheling was alive, they were still of the blood-royal of England on their father's side, while on their mother's they were akin to the kings both of Sweden and Denmark. An additional proof of what modern German jurists would call them, ebenbürtigkeit, may be found in the fact that a Grand-Duke of Russia chose his wife from their family, when its fortune was at the lowest ebb :— RAGNAR LODBROK'S TREE IN SWEDEN AND DENMARK. would have made all government impossible. Though called "The Stern" in his lifetime, and though that title still clings to his name in history, his people acknowledged after his death the greatness and firmness of his character, which procured them the peace for which Norway was famous in the days of his son Olaf the Quiet. Some time after the battle of Stamford Bridge, most probably in the year 1069, when William was more firmly seated on his new throne, and the peaceful policy of King Olaf was well ascertained, messages of friendship passed between England and Norway, and then it was that Skuli, the son of Tostig, who was called King Olaf's foster-child, was sent from Norway to ask the Conqueror for Harold Hardrada's body. Jaroslav, 1054; m. to Ingigerda, Olaf the Bosomking's daughter, in Sweden. But if The prayer was granted, and then all that was left of that bold and politic prince was disinterred, put on board ship at Grimsby, borne to Norway, and at last buried at Drontheim. his heart was with his treasure after death, his spirit must have lingered in England, for it is expressly said that all that huge hoard of gold for which he had toiled so hard became the spoil of the Conqueror. Harold Hardrada was fifty-one years old when he fell. He was still fair of face and strong of body, of most majestic mien, to which his enormous stature contributed not a little. His hair and beard were light-brown; his hands and feet, though large, were well made. He, too, like his nephew Magnus, and like the meek Confessor, was "a royal man," and, like his nephew, he had but one blemish, in that one of his eyebrows was higher upon his brow than the other. So there at Drontheim those tall bones were laid by the side of St. Olaf, and Norway had rest for seven-and-twenty years. ART. V.-1. Heaven our Home. Edinburgh. 2. Life in Heaven. By the same Author. 3. Meet for Heaven. Do. 4. Our Companions in Glory. By the Rev. J. M. KILLEN, Author of " Our Friends in Heaven." Edinburgh. 5. Tracts. By the Rev. C. B. TAYLER. Religious Tract Society. 6. Tracts. By the Rev. J. C. RYLE. 7. The Barham Tracts. By the Rev. ASHTON OXENDON. London. 8. The Earnest Communicant. 9. The Pathway of Safety. Do. do. ALL human things are still, in a certain sense, if not quite in the Pythagorean, "resolvable by numbers." If we would understand the great motive powers of any age, if we would know how our fellow-men at any given period of time have been used to live, and feel, and act, we must have recourse to statistics,--the "old lamp," rusty and unattractive-looking, which, when brighter guides would fail us, can lead us through many an intricate passage of thought, and admit us into many a richly stored chamber of feeling. If to know the number of marriages taking place within a certain year leads us to an estimate of the existing amount of national prosperity, so from the number and character of books sold within any given period, may we predicate that period's leading tendencies. For to few books, as to few men, is it given to command the age they appear in. Of the myriads which have their "run," and are read by those who run along with them, it may be safely affirmed that they are carried onwards less by strength of inward impetus, than by force of outward stress and pressure. "The wind hath bound them up within its wings;" and, by fixing our eyes upon their flight, we may learn what way the wind is now setting. Viewing things in this light, we may find sermons and stories in advertisements, and discover a deep significance in the announcements now greeting us from the cover of every periodical: HEAVEN OUR HOME, 89,000 copies. MEET FOR HEAVEN, by the Author of "Heaven our Home," 23,000 copies. LIFE IN HEAVEN, Thus, even in our work-day world, wherein it is often hard. enough to find the meat which perishes, in our modern scientific world, which furnishes so many popular treatises on Astronomy, it seems that there is a great number of persons who do not so entirely live by bread alone, but that a book about Heaven will interest them! Let us make every reasonable deduction from the enormous sale of books of a decidedly religious character; let us allow for the certainty of Sunday coming once in every week, and bringing with it a length of leisure which passes over more comfortably with a book in the hand than without one; let us concede that many of these books are read upon the opus operatum principle by simple-minded persons to whom one "good book " is, in a true and literal sense, as good as another, if not better;" let us even grant that in many cases these books are probably not read at all, but that the prettily bound, gilt-edged volume, given as a parting memento, or sent as a far-off remembrancer, is kept thenceforth by its owner as a sort of literary and spiritual amulet, to be looked at rather than looked into; let us allow for all this, and we shall still find, in the hold which religious literature has upon the less educated portion of the community, the revelation of a deep and true devotional instinct. Man loves his home, and loves to hear about the way to it, the path which the vulture's eye hath not known. The steps to Heaven, though marked out by God himself, have been ever like those which the Pilgrim missed in the first outstart of his immortal journey, hard to find, apt to be obscured. Man upon such a path is thankful for small helps, glad of the glowworm's ray, of the rushlight in some distant cottage. And in the very titles of the books now before us, we may discern the voice of our common humanity, which says::- "Who will show us any good?"-of humanity, which "can recognise, even in an age of material prosperity like our present one, that this desired good, this coveted gladness, is not to be sought for in the increase of corn and wine and oil, were these never so abundant, but to be found in the deepened sense of God's goodness, in the clearer revelation of his Spiritual Presence:" "Lord, lift THOU up the light of thy countenance upon us." Literature of this class, it is evident, must not be measured by the canons of ordinary criticism. Schiller has told us that a direct object in writing is fatal to a work of high imagination; but of books like these the aim is the very life, and soul, and strength; but for it they would not have been written at all, so that the question of their claims and merits is chiefly one of fitness and acceptability. These are books written to a certain end; do they meet it? They are addressed to a given area of intelligence; do they tell within that area? Do they, in short, hit their mark or miss it? And while we keep these distinctions in view, we must none the less bear in mind that the poem or story addressed to the uneducated or partially educated mind, with a directly religious purpose, has its own peculiar standard of excellence, even of perfection, and that this standard has been |