Excerpt from History of Lynn, Vol. 2: Essex County, Massachusetts, Including Lynnfield, Saugus, Swampscott, and Nahant, 1864-1893 At all events, if these roving Northmen were here at the early period claimed it is evident that they did not brave the ocean terrors for any legitimate purposes of discovery, or with any tangible convictions touching the existence of unknown lands. They were adventurous freebooters, brave, reckless, barbarous; bent on making themselves possessors of whatever they coveted, by force, fraud, or any other means suggested by their brutish genius. And so they pursued their savage career, occasionally driven from their contemplated course by the violence of the elements, but never from their purpose of rapine and murder by the gentler instincts of humanity. But yet it becomes us to be a little chary of our denunciations of these people, for they were our own forefathers. From their loins Sprang the brave Saxons who have been so lauded as a race, and whose blood we so love to claim flows in our own veins. A lively imagination will often make surprising discoveries, trace unexpected analogies, and form captivating theories, where we of the duller sort discern nothing unusual. And who that has reflected on the diversity of human minds has not felt almost hopelessly bewildered. There is as much difference among minds as among faces and would that there might be invented a mirror in which to trace our mental features as we do our physical, in the looking-glass. There is little difficulty in recog nising leading characteristics. We know the mathematical mind by its preciseness the poetical by its ready discernment and love of the beautiful the semi-preternatural by its delight in things striking and marvellous. Now, in our friend Lewis's mind were combined, in a somewhat peculiar manner, the two latter qualities indicated. He had poetical conception and a love of the marvel lous and under their prompting, stimulated by the fascinations of historic imagery, without doubt wrote the foregoing paragraphs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.