most 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 or more temperate climates. 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,10 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."1 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 with any degree of historical certainty. And yet, as the most philosophic 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 Indigence, 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;12 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. Origin of the Germans. 8 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, c. 20, Cluver. 1. i. c. 14. 10 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 poles. The hog seems to approach the nearest to our species in that privilege. 12 Tacit. Germ. c. 2. 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." The Gothini, whom Tacitus distinguishes from the Gothi, and whom he places behind the Marcomanni and Quadi. (Tacit. Germ. c. 43.) But the improbability of an isolated Gallic people in this district is very great: and it has therefore Such rational doubt is but ill suited with the genius of popular vanity. Among the nations who have adopted the Mosaic Fables and history of the world, the ark of Noah has been of the same conjectures. 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, 13 as well as the wild Tartar,1 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 great-grandchildren 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. 15 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 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 13 According to Dr. Keating (History 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 one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight. 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. 14 Genealogical History of the Tartars by Abulghazi Bahadur Khan. 15 His work, entitled Atlantica, is uncommonly scarce. Bayle has given two most curious extracts from it. République des Lettres, Janvier et Février, 1685. been conjectured, with much probability, that they spoke the Galician (a Lithuanian) language, and that this name was con VOL. I. founded by Tacitus with the better known author's metaphor) the blood circulated from the extremities to the heart. But all this well-laboured system of German antiquities is anni The Germans ignorant of letters; hilated 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;16 and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised 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, 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 con 16 Tacit. Germ. c. 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. ii. 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. vii. 18), who lived towards the end of the sixth century. Barbara fraxineis pingatur RUNA tabellis." The obscure subject of the Runic characters has exercised the industry and ingenuity of the modern scholars of the North. There are three distinct theories; one, maintained by Schlözer (Nordische Geschichte, p. 481, &c.), who considers their sixteen letters to be a corruption of the Roman alphabet, post-Christian in their date, and Schlözer would attribute their introduction into the North to the Alemanni. The second, that of Frederick Schlegel (Vorlesungen über alte und neue Literatur), supposes that these characters were left on the coasts of the Mediterranean and Northern Seas by the Phoenicians, preserved by the priestly castes, and employed for purposes of magic. Their common origin from the Phoenician would account for their similarity to the Roman letters. The last, to which we incline, claims a much higher and more venerable antiquity for the Runic, and supposes them to have been the original characters of the Indo-Teutonic tribes, brought from the East, and preserved among the different races of that stock. See Ueber Deutsche Runen, von W. C. Grimm, 1821. A Memoir by Dr. Legis, Fundgruben des alten Nordens. Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. ix. p. 438.-M. siderable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life. In a Of these arts the ancient Germans were wretchedly destitute. They passed their lives in a state of ignorance and poverty, of arts and which it has pleased some declaimers to dignify with the agriculture; appellation of virtuous simplicity. Modern Germany is said to contain about two thousand three hundred walled towns.17 much wider extent of country the geographer Ptolemy could discover no more than ninety places which he decorates with the name of cities;18 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. 19 But Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact, that the Germans, in his time, had no cities;20 and that they affected to despise the works of Roman industry as places of confinement rather than of security.21 Their edifices were not even contiguous, or formed into regular villas;22 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 habitations.23 They were indeed no more than low huts of a circular figure, built of rough timber, thatched with straw, and pierced at the top to leave a free passage for the smoke. In the most inclement winter the hardy German was satisfied with a scanty garment made of the skin of some animal. The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed themselves in furs; and the women manufactured for 17 Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains, tom. iii. p. 228. The author of that very curious work is, if I am not misinformed, a German by birth. [De Pauw.] 18 The Alexandrian geographer is often criticised by the accurate Cluverius. 19 See Cæsar, and the learned Mr. Whitaker in his History of Manchester, vol. i. 20 Tacit. Germ. 16. 21 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. iv. 64. 22 The straggling villages of Silesia are several miles in length. See Cluver. 1. i. c. 13. 23 One hundred and forty years after Tacitus a few more regular erected near the Rhine and Danube. Herodian, 1. vii. [c. 2] p. 234. a Luden (the author of the Geschichte des Teutschen Volkes) has surpassed most writers in his patriotic enthusiasm for the virtues and noble manners of his ancestors. Even the cold of the climate, and the want of vines and fruit-trees, as well as the bar barism of the inhabitants, are calumnies structures were of the luxurious Italians. M. Guizot, on the other side (in his Histoire de la Civilisation, vol. i. p. 272, &c.), has drawn a curious parallel between the Germans of Tacitus and the North American Indians. -M. their own use a coarse kind of linen.24 The game of various sorts with which the forests of Germany were plentifully stocked supplied its inhabitants with food and exercise.25 Their monstrous herds of cattle, less remarkable indeed for their beauty than for their utility,26 formed the principal object of their wealth. A small quantity of corn was the only produce exacted from the earth: the use of orchards or artificial meadows was unknown to the Germans; nor can we expect any improvements in agriculture from a people whose property every year experienced a general change by a new division of the arable lands, and who, in that strange operation, avoided disputes by suffering a great part of their territory to lie waste and without tillage.27 and of the use of Its Gold, silver, and iron were extremely scarce in Germany. barbarous inhabitants wanted both skill and patience to metals. investigate those rich veins of silver which have so liberally rewarded the attention of the princes of Brunswick and Saxony. Sweden, which now supplies Europe with iron, was equally ignorant of its own riches; and the appearance of the arms of the Germans furnished a sufficient proof how little iron they were able to bestow on what they must have deemed the noblest use of that metal. The various transactions of peace and war had introduced some Roman coins (chiefly silver) among the borderers of the Rhine and Danube; but the more distant tribes were absolutely unacquainted with the use of money, carried on their confined traffic by the exchange of commodities, and prized their rude earthen vessels as of equal value with the silver vases, the presents of Rome to their princes and ambassadors. 28 To a mind capable of reflection such leading facts convey more instruction than a tedious detail of subordinate circumstances. The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent. The use of gold and silver is in a great measure factitious; but it would be impossible to enumerate the important and various services which agriculture, and all the arts, have received from iron, when tempered and fashioned by the operation of fire and the dexterous hand of man. Money, in a word, is the most universal incitement, iron the most powerful instrument, of human industry; and it is very difficult to conceive by what means a people, neither actuated by the 24 Tacit. Germ. 17. 26 Tacit. Germ. 5. 25 Cæsar. de Bell. Gall. vi. 21. 26 Tacit. Germ. 5. |