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to Thor, during the feast of Iuul, fat oxen and hotfes; to Frigga the largeft hog they could get[1]; to Odin horfes, dogs, and falcons, sometimes cocks, and a fat bull. When they had once laid it down as a principle that the effufion of the blood of thefe animals appeafed the anger of the gods, and that their juftice turned afide up- on the victims thofe ftrokes which were deftined for men; their great care then was for nothing more than to conciliate their favour by fo eafy a method. It is the nature of violent defires and exceffive fear to know no bounds, and therefore when they would ask for any favour which they ardently wished for, or would deprecate fome public calamity which they feared, the blood of animals was not deemed a price sufficient, but they began to shed that of men. It is probable that this barbarous practice was formerly almost universal, and that it is of a very remote antiquity: It was not entirely abolished among the northern nations till towards the ninth century, because before that time they had not received the light of the gospel, and were ignorant of those arts which had softened
- ↑ Matrem Deûm venerantur Æstii: insigne superstitionis, formas aprorum geslant. Tacit. Germ. c. 45.
