the most rigorous cold. The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered with deep and lasting snow, and the great river St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are usually free from ice.*

It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, the influence of the climate of ancient Germany over the minds and bodies of the natives. Many writers have supposed, and must have allowed, though as it should seem without any adequate proof, that the rigorous cold of the north was favourable to long life and generative vigour, that the women were more fruitful, and the human species more prolific than in warmer and more temperate climes. We may assert, with greater confidence, that the keen air of Germany formed the large and masculine limbs of the natives, who were, in general, of a more lofty stature than the people of the south, gave them a kind of strength better adapted to violent exertions than to patient labour, and inspired them with constitutional bravery, which is the result of nerves and spirits. The severity of a winter campaign, that chilled the courage of the Roman troops, was scarcely felt by these hardy children of the north,§ who in. their turn were unable to resist the summer heats, and dissolved away in languor and sickness under the beams of an Italian sun.T

There is not, anywhere upon the globe, a large tract of country which we have discovered destitute of inhabitants, or whose first population can be fixed upon with any degree of historical certainty. And yet, as the most philosophic

remains of the Hercynian wood. * Charlevoix, Histoire du Canada. [The resemblance here pointed out was not confined to the physical condition of the land; it extended also to the character and manners of the people. Modern descriptions of North American savages are the best commentaries on those given by Tacitus of the ancient Germans.-SCHREITER.] +Olaus Rudbeck asserts, that the Swedish women often bear ten or twelve children, and not uncommonly twenty or thirty; but the authority of Rudbeck is much to be suspected.

In hos artus, in hæc corpora, quæ miramur, excrescunt. Tacit. Germania, 3, 20. Cluver. 1. 1, c. 14. § Plutarch. in Mario. The Cimbri, by way of amusement, often slid down mountains of snow on their broad shields. The Romans made war in all climates, and by their excellent discipline were, in a great measure, preserved in health and vigour. It may be remarked, that man is the only animal which can live and multiply in every country from the equator to the

minds can seldom refrain from investigating the infancy of great nations, our curiosity consumes itself in toilsome and disappointed efforts. When Tacitus considered the purity of the German blood, and the forbidding aspect of the country, he was disposed to pronounce those barbarians indigena, or natives of the soil. We may allow with safety, and perhaps with truth, that ancient Germany was not originally peopled by any foreign colonies already formed into a political society;* but that the name and nation received their existence from the gradual union of some wandering savages of the Hercynian woods. To assert those savages to have been the spontaneous production of the earth which they inhabited, would be a rash inference, condemned by religion, and unwarranted by reason.

Such rational doubt is but ill-suited with the genius of popular vanity. Among the nations who have adopted the Mosaic history of the world, the ark of Noah has been of

poles. The hog seems to approach the nearest to our species in that privilege. * Tacit. German. c. 3. The emigration of the Gauls followed the course of the Danube, and discharged itself on Greece and Asia. Tacitus could discover only one inconsiderable tribe that retained any traces of a Gallic origin. [These were the Gothines, who must not be confounded with the Goths, a tribe of the Suevi. In the time of Cæsar, there were many other tribes of Gallic origin along the Danube, who could not withstand the Suevi for any length of time. The Helvetii, who lived at the entrance of the Black Forest, had been expelled long before Cæsar. He also mentions the Volci Tectosagi, who came from Languedoc, and established themselves about the Black Forest. The Boii, who had penetrated there, and have left in Bohemia traces of their name, were reduced into subjection by the Marcomanni in the first century. Other Boii, who had fixed in *Noricum, were blended with the Lombards, and received the name of Boio-Avii (Bavarians).-GUIZOT.] [How can M. Guizot reconcile his ready assent to Gibbon's assertion that "the emigration of the Gauls discharged itself on Greece and Asia," with his own more correct statement, in a former note, that the population of Germany "had pushed on from east to west"? And why does he degrade "the Goths," the generic name of the whole collective race, into a mere "tribe of the Suevi"? The emigration of the Tectosagi from Gaul to Asia was a fable, invented to account for two Celtic tribes, of the same name, being found in two regions so remote from each other. Those who have attentively studied all that Herodotus has told us of the Kire merioi, and have critically examined what they find in Latin writers, especially Polybius, respecting the Galatians, will concur with M. Niebuhr, when he says, "the phenomenon of the Celts, emigrating from western Europe and returning into interior Asia, is contrary to the rule, which, even in history, is invariably observed, that the

the same use as was formerly to the Greeks and Romans the siege of Troy. On a narrow basis of acknowledged truth, an immense but rude superstructure of fable has been erected; and the wild Irishman,* as well as the wild Tartar, could point out the individual son of Japhet, from whose loins his ancestors were lineally descended. The last century abounded with antiquarians of profound learning and easy faith, who by the dim light of legends and traditions, of conjectures and etymologies, conducted the greatgrand-children of Noah from the tower of Babel to the extremities of the globe. Of these judicious critics, one of the most entertaining was Olaus Rudbeck, professor in the University of Upsal. Whatever is celebrated either in history or fable, this zealous patriot ascribes to his country. From Sweden (which formed so considerable a part of ancient Germany) the Greeks themselves derived their alphabetical characters, their astronomy, and their religion. Of that delightful region (for such it appeared to the eyes of a native) the Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyperboreans, the gardens of the Hesperides, the Fortunate Islands, and even the Elysian fields, were all but faint and imperfect transcripts. A clime so profusely favoured by nature, could not long remain desert after the flood. The learned Rudbeck allows the family of Noah a few years to multiply from eight to about twenty thousand persons. He then disperses them into small colonies to replenish the earth and to propagate the human species. The German or Swedish detachment (which marched, if I am not mistaken, under the command of Askenaz, the son of Gomer, the son of Japhet) distinguished itself by a more than common

*

stream never returns to its source." (History of Rome, vol. ii. p. 264.— ED.] According to Dr. Keating (Hist. of Ireland, p. 13, 14), the giant Partholanus, who was the son of Seara, the son of Esra, the son of Sru, the son of Framant, the son of Fathaclan, the son of Magog, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah, landed on the coast of Munster the 14th day of May. in the year of the world 1978. Though he succeeded in his great enterprise, the loose behaviour of his wife rendered his domestic life very unhappy, and provoked him to such a degree that he killed-her favourite greyhound. This, as the learned historian very properly observes, was the first instance of female falsehood and infidelity ever known in Ireland. + Genealogical History of the Tartars, by Abulghazi Bahadur Khan. His work, entitled Atlantica, is uncommonly scarce. Bayle has given two most

diligence in the prosecution of this great work. The northern hive cast its swarms over the greatest part of Europe, Africa, and Asia; and (to use the author's metaphor) the blood circulated from the extremities to the heart.

But all this well-laboured system of German antiquities is annihilated by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters;* and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The former, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own experience, and lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot,

curious extracts from it. République des Lettres, Janvier et Fevrier, 1685. * Tacit. Germ. 2, 19. Literarum secreta viri pariter ac fœminæ ignorant. We may rest contented with this decisive authority, without entering into the obscure disputes concerning the antiquity of the Runic characters. The learned Celsius, a Swede, a scholar, and a philosopher, was of opinion that they were nothing more than the Roman letters, with the curves changed into straight lines for the ease of engraving. See Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, 1. 2, c. 11. Dictionnaire Diplomatique, tom. i. p. 223. We may add, that the oldest Runic inscriptions are supposed to be of the third century, and the most ancient writer who mentions the Runic characters is Venantius Fortunatus (Carm. 7, 18), who lived towards the end of the 6th century.

"Barbara fraxineis pingatur Runa tabellis.”

[If the author had considered the idiomatic use of the words, and the connection in which they here stand, he would have seen that "literarum secreta" properly means, "private correspondence," (geheime Briefe); and would not have found in this passage so "decisive" a proof of his position.-SCHREITER.] [Schreiter's note is, perhaps, supported by the context, and certainly by the authority of Brotier, Literas quidem noverant, ut patet ex Marobodui et Adgandestrii epistolis (Annot. ii. 63 et 88); at amatoria et furtiva literarum secreta viri pariter ac fœminæ ignorabant." It is not, however, worth

and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses, but very little, his fellow-labourer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties. The same, and even a greater, difference will be found between nations than between individuals; and we may safely pronounce, that without some species of writing, no people has ever preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, to any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.

Of these arts, the ancient Germans were wretchedly destitute. They passed their lives in a state of ignorance and poverty, which it has pleased some declaimers to dignify with the appellation of virtuous simplicity. Modern Germany is said to contain about two thousand three hundred walled towns.* In a much wider extent of country, the geographer Ptolemy could discover no more than ninety places, which he decorates with the name of cities;† though according to our ideas, they would but ill deserve that splendid title. We can only suppose them to have been rude fortifications, constructed in the centre of the woods, and designed to secure the women, children, and cattle, whilst the warriors of the tribe marched out to repel a sudden invasion. But Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact, that the Germans, in his time, had no cities,§ and that they affected to despise the works of Roman industry, as places of confinement, rather than of security. Their edifices were not even contiguous, or formed into regular villas;** each barbarian fixed his independent dwelling on the spot to which a plain, a wood, or a stream of fresh water, had induced him to give the preference. Neither stone, nor brick, nor tiles, were employed in these slight

+ See

while to complain of the interpretation which Gibbon has given to the words of Tacitus.-ED.] * Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. iii. p. 228. The author of that very curious work is, if I am not misinformed, a German by birth. The Alexandrian geographer is often criticised by the accurate Cluverius. Cæsar, and the learned Mr. Whitaker, in his History of Manchester, vol. i. § Tacit. Germ. 15. When the Germans commanded the Ubii of Cologne to cast off the Roman yoke, and with their new freedom to resume their ancient manners, they insisted on the immediate demolition of the walls of the colony. "Postulamus a vobis, muros coloniæ, munimenta servitii, detrahatis; etiam fera animalia, si clausa teneas, virtutis obliviscuntur." Tacit. Hist. 4, 64.

**The