19.

"The Americans play for their furs, their domestic utensils, their clothes, their arms, and when all is lost, we often ses cm risk, at a single blow, their liberty.

20.

"When the Iroquois choose to paint their faces it is to give themselves a terrible air, with which they hope to intimidate their enemies; it is also for this reason that they paint themselves black when they go to war."-Variétés Litteraires, i. 472.

22.

After the Indians are twenty years old they allow their hair to grow. -Lett. édif., viii. 261.

The custom of scalping, or taking off the hair of their enemies, so common among the Americans, was also practised among the Germans : this is the decalvare mentioned in the laws of the Visigoths; the capillos et cutem detrahere, still in use among the Franks towards the year 879, according to the annals of Fulda; the hettinan of the AngloSaxons, &c.-Adelung, Ancient History of the Germans, 303.

Here are numerous citations; I might extend them much more, and might almost always place, side by side with the most trifling assertion of Tacitus concerning the Germans, an analogous assertion of some modern traveller or historian, concerning some one of the barbarous tribes at present dispersed over the face of the globe.

You see what is the social condition which corresponds to that of ancient Germany: what, then, must we think of those magnificent descriptions which have so often been drawn? Precisely that which we should think of Cooper's romances, as pictures of the condition and manners of the savages of North America. There is, without doubt, in these romances and in some of the works in which the Germans have attempted to depict their wild ancestors, a sufficiently vivid and true perception of certain parts and certain periods of barbarous society and life of its independence, for in

stance; of the activity and indolence which it combines; of the skilful energy which man therein displays against the obstacles and perils wherewith material nature besieges him; of the monotonous violence of his passions, &c. &c. But the picture is very incomplete-so incomplete that the truth of even what it represents is often much changed by it. That Cooper, in writing of the Mohicans or the Delawares, and that the German writers, in describing the ancient Germans, should allow themselves to represent all things under their poetic aspect-that, in their descriptions, the sentiments and circumstances of barbarous life should become exalted to their ideal form-is very natural, and, I willingly admit, is very legitimate: the ideal is the essence of poetry -history itself is partial to it; and perhaps it is the only form under which times gone by can be duly represented. But the ideal must also be true, complete, and harmonious; it does not consist in the arbitrary and fanciful suppression of a large portion of the reality to which it corresponds. Assuredly, the songs which bear the name of Homer, form an ideal picture of Greek society; nevertheless, that society is therein reproduced in a complete state, with the rusticity and ferocity of its manners, the coarse simplicity of its sentiments, and its good and bad passions, without any design of particularly drawing forth or celebrating such or such of its merits and its advantages, or of leaving in the shade its vices and its evils.

This mixture of good and evil, of strong and weakthis co-existence of ideas and sentiments apparently contradictory--this variety, this incoherence, this unequal development of human nature and human destiny-is precisely the condition which is the most rife with poetry, for through it we see to the bottom of things, it is the truth concerning man and the world; and in the ideal pictures which poetry, romance, and even history, make of it, this so various and yet harmonious whole ought to be found, for without it the true ideal will be wanting, no less than the reality. Now it is into this fault that the writers of whom I speak have always fallen; their pictures of savage man and of savage life are essentially incomplete, formal, factitious, and wanting in simplicity and harmony. One fancies that one sees melodramatic barbarians and savages, who present themselves to

display their independence, their energy, their skill, or such and such a portion of their character and destiny, before the eyes of spectators who, at once greedy of, but worn out with excitement, still take pleasure in qualities and adventures foreign to the life they themselves lead, and to the society by which they are surrounded. I know not whether you are struck, as I am, with the defects of the imagination in our times. Upon the whole, it seems to me that it lacks nature, facility, and extension; it does not take a large and simple view of things in their primitive and real elements; it arranges them theatrically, and mutilates them under the pretence of idealizing them. It is true that I find, in the modern descriptions of ancient German manners, scattered characteristics of barbarism, but I can discover nothing therefrom of what barbarous society was as a whole.

some

If I were obliged to sum up that which I have now said upon the state of the Germans before the invasion, I confess I should be somewhat embarrassed. We find therein no precise and well defined traits which may be detached and distinctly exhibited; no fact, no idea, no sentiment had as yet attained to its development, or as yet presented itself under a determinate form; it was the infancy of all things, of the social and moral states, of institutions, of relations, of man himself; everything was rough and confused. There are, however, two points to which I think I ought to direct your attention:

1st. At the opening of modern civilization, the Germans influenced it far less by the institutions which they brought with them from Germany, than by their situation itself, amidst the Roman world. They had conquered it: they were, at least upon the spot where they had established themselves, masters of the population and of the territory. The society which formed itself after this conquest, arose rather from this situation, from the new life led by the conquerors in their relations with the conquered, than from the ancient German

manners.

2nd. That which the Germans especially brought into the Roman world was the spirit of individual liberty, the need, the passion for independence and individuality. To speak properly, no public power, no religious power, existed in ancient Germany; the only real power in this society, the only

power that was strong and active in it, was the will of man?> each one did what he chose, at his own risk and peril.

The system of force, that is to say, of personal liberty, was at the bottom of the social state of the Germans. Through this it was that their influence became so powerful upon the modern world. Very general expressions border always so nearly upon inaccuracy, that I do not like to risk them. Nevertheless, were it absolutely necessary to express in few words the predominating characters of the various elements of our civilization, I should say, that the spirit of legality, of regular association, came to us from the Roman world, from the Roman municipalities and laws. It is to Christianity, to the religious society that we owe the spirit of morality, the sentiment and empire of rule, of a moral law, of the mutual duties of men. The Germans conferred upon us the spirit of liberty, of liberty such as we conceive of, and are acquainted with it, in the present day, as the right and property of each individual, master of himself, of his actions, and of his fate, so long as he injures no other individual. This is a fact of universal importance, for it was unknown to all preceding civilizations: in the ancient republics, the public power disposed all things; the individual was sacrificed to the citizen. In the societies where the religious principle predominated, the believer belonged to his God, not to himself. Thus, man hitherto had always been absorbed in the church or in the state. In modern Europe, alone, has he existed and developed himself on his own account and in his own way, charged, no doubt, charged continually, more and more heavily with toils and duties, but finding in himself his aim and his right. It is to German manners that we must trace this distinguishing characteristic of our civilization. The fundamental idea of liberty, in modern Europe, came to it from its conquerors.

EIGHTH LECTURE

Object of the lecture-True character of the German invasions--Cause of errors on this subject-Description of the state of Gaul in the last half of the sixth century-Dissolution of Roman society: 1. In rural districts ; 2. In towns, though in a lesser degree-Dissolution of German society: 1. Of the colony or tribe; 2. Of the warfaring band-Elements of the new social state: 1. Of commencing royalty; 2. Of commencing feudalism; 3. Of the church, after the invasion-Summary.

WE are now in possession of the two primitive and fundamental elements of French civilization; we have studied, on the one hand, Roman civilization, on the other, German society, each in itself, and prior to their apposition. Let us endeavour to ascertain what happened in the moment at which they touched together, and became confounded with one another; that is to say, to describe the condition of Gaul after the great invasion and settlement of the Germans.

I should wish to assign to this description a somewhat precise date, and to inform you, beforehand, to what age and to what territory it especially belongs. The difficulty or doing this is great. Such, at this epoch, was the confusion of things and minds, that the greater part of the facts have been transmitted to us without order and without date, particularly general facts, those connected with institutions. with the relations of the different classes, in a word, with the social condition; facts which, by nature, are the least apparent and the least precise. They are omitted or strangely confused in contemporary monuments; we must, at every step, guess at and restore their chronology. Happily, the accuracy of this chronology is of less importance at this epoch than at any other. No doubt, between the sixth and ghth centuries, the state of Gaul must have changed; rela