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or God, gave his wife also the name of Frea consecrated to the Earth, and that they paid her the same compliment they had done her husband. Thus the same confusion, which prevails in the descriptions given us of Odin, equally obtains in that of his wife; and without doubt the worship of both the one and the other underwent an alteration at this period. This Frea became in the sequel, the goddess of love and debauchery, the Venus of the north, doubtless because she passed for the principle of all fecundity, and for the mother of all existence. It was she that was addressed in order to obtain happy marriages and easy child-births. She dispensed pleasures, enjoyments and delights of all kinds. The Edda stiles her the most favourable of the goddesses; and in imitation of the Venus of the Greeks, who lived in the most tender union with Mars, Frea went to war as well as Odin, and divided with him the souls of the slain and indeed it would have been very hard if the goddess of pleasures had been deprived of an amusement which her votaries were so fond of. It appears to have been the general opinion, that he was the same with the Venus of the Greeks and Romans, since the sixth day of the week which was confecrated to her under the
