Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/76

 amounted to two millions of people. Small as the demand might be for intellectual gratification among these two millions, yet they were scattered over countries widely apart, and they used a common tongue, and had a real and effective relationship of families among them all; and the desire for news of what was doing in other lands, and for narratives of events which might be of importance in their family interests, would be sufficient to give an impulse to such a small population as that of Iceland, which never exceeded sixty or sixty-four thousand people, to give employment to all the surplus talent of such a population, and to keep up a literary tone, if it may be so called, of the public mind in such a handful of people. Men of any talent would naturally endeavour to qualify themselves for that profession in which several, and probably a considerable number, attained distinction, wealth, or high consideration. It was better than the chance of advantage from embarking as a private seaman or man-at-arms in viking forays and cruises under a sea-king; better than staying at home tending cattle, cutting peats, making hay, and catching and curing fish. The same motives operate in the same way at this day in the social economy of Iceland. The youth of talents and ambition study, come to the university of Copenhagen, become often men of very great attainments and learning, and with as few chances or examples before them of substantial reward for their labours as the scalds, their predecessors, could have had. The impulse to mind in any community being once given, either by accidental or physical circumstances, the movement in the same direction goes on, and seems to be permanent—never to cease. The perpetuity of intellectual movement, of the direction of mind and mental energy in the same way, even when laws, government, and all social arrangements, and even religion itself, are altered,