The Graves Of Odin, Thor, And Freva At Old Upsala.

Castle Gripsholm On Lake Malar.

The New University Building.

There is something sad in the extinction of a really fine mvthologv. Together with much worthless superstition, a certain element of poetry is thereby taken from the world, never to be replaced. Hence, standing on this last great stronghold of the Norse religion, I felt as I had done at Philae, the final refuge of the Faith of Isis and Osiris; and on the site of Grecian temples, where headless statues and abandoned shrines recalled the vanished Hermes and Apollo; and in the sacred grove of Nikko, where Japan's immemorial beliefs are falling, one by one, like autumn leaves. The childhood of the race was credulous; its youth intolerant and zealous; but its maturity is cynical through skepticism. The world grows old. Crusaders and cathedral builders come no more. Most of man's former faiths are now regarded fabulous. Their prophets have become as phantoms, and their gods as ghosts. The Dryads have been driven from the trees, and from the streams the Nymphs. The sun is robbed of Phoebus, and the stars of souls. The sea no longer recognizes Neptune and his Tritons; and Aphrodite comes not to her native waves.

We speak continually, in our weekly calendar, of Odin's or Wodan's day, Thor's day, and Freya's day; but to the Norse divinities, whose names are thus perpetuated in our common speech, we rarely pay the tribute of a thought. Our warriors charge in battle; but they have not the creed which thrilled the Vikings of the olden time; for where are the Valkyrs to uplift them on their fiery steeds and bear them to Valhalla? The universe has been depopulated of its deities. Even the most devout of men fears now to form a mental image of Divinity, perceiving that the Infinite cannot be defined and limited, and that his former anthropomorphic God was but the magnified reflection of his own ideals. Thus, man is left - superior in science, but bereft at heart - standing upon the planet's rim, and gazing into shoreless space. From time to time he sees a comrade slip into the silent void; but, peer as keenly as he can into the darkness, nothing meets his gaze; strain as he may his hearing, he detects no sound. The one thing certain is that he, too, in his turn must make the plunge. Yet, though the Tree of Knowledge cannot truthfully be called the Tree of Happiness, one who has tasted of its fruit must live by it for evermore; and though his heart may yearn at times for the sweet, sheltered valley of his childhood, he still elects to stand upon the lonelv height, and looks off wistfully and wonderingly at the distant stars.

A Valkyr, From A Painting By Arbo.

Thor, A Statue By Fogelberg.

A Winter Scene In Sweden.