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laws by degrees relaxed, and their manners still more than their laws.
A numerous offspring was commonly produced from these marriages; but neither the rich, nor the poor scrupled to expose such of their children as they did not chuse to bring up[1]. Both the Greeks and Romans were guilty of this barbarous practice, long before they can be said to have been corrupted by prosperity, luxury and the arts: So true is it that ignorance is no security from vice, and that men always know enough to invent crimes. It is no less remarkable, that a kind of infant baptism was practised in the North, long before the first dawning of Christianity had reached those parts. Snorro Sturleson, in his Chronicle, speaking of a Norwegian nobleman, who lived in the reign of Harald Harfagre, relates, that he poured water on the head of a new-born child, and called him Hacon, from the name of his father[2]. Harald himself had been baptized in the fame manner, and it is noted of king Olave Tryggueson, that his mother Astride had him thus baptized and named as soon as he was born. The Livonians observed
