VIII.

CHAP. Their military operations were impeded by a useless train of women, eunuchs, horses, and camels, and in the midst of a fuccessful campaign, the Perfian hoft was often feparated or destroyed by an unexpected famine ".

But the nobles of Perfia, in the bofom of luxury and defpotifm, preferved a strong sense of perfonal gallantry and national honour. From the age of feven years they were taught to speak truth, to shoot with the bow, and to ride; and it was univerfally confeffed, that in the two laft of thefe arts, they had made a more than common proficiency". The most The most diftinguished youth were educated under the monarch's eye, practised their exercises in the gate of his palace, and were feverely trained up to the habits of temperance and obedience, in their long and laborious parties of hunting. In every province, the fatrap maintained a like fchool of military virtue. The Perfian nobles (fo natural is the idea of feudal tenures) received from the king's bounty lands and houses, on the condition of their fervice in war. They were ready on the firft fummons to mount on horseback, with a martial and fplendid train of followers, and to join the numerous bodies of guards, who were carefully felected from amongst the most robuft slaves, and the bravest adventurers of Afia. These armies, both of light and of heavy cavalry, equally formidable by the impetuofity of their charge, and the rapidity of their motions, threatened, as an impending cloud, the eastern provinces of the declining empire of Rome ".

CHAP. IX.

The State of Germany till the Invasion of the Barbarians, in the Time of the Emperor Decius.

THE government and religion of Perfia have CHAP.

deferved fome notice from their connexion with the decline and fall of the Roman empire. We shall occafionally mention the Scythian, or Sarmatian tribes, which, with their arms and horfes, their flocks and herds, their wives and families, wandered over the immense plains which fpread themselves from the Cafpian Sea to the Viftula, from the confines of Perfia to thofe of Germany. But the warlike Germans, who first refifted, then invaded, and at length overturned, the western monarchy of Rome, will occupy a much more important place in this history, and poffefs a stronger, and, if we may use the expreffion, a more domeftic, claim to our attention and regard. The moft civilized nations of modern Europe iffued from the woods of Germany, and, in the rude inftitutions of thofe barbarians we may still diftinguish the original principles of our present laws and manners. In their primitive ftate of fimplicity and independence, the Germans were furveyed by the difcerning eye, and delineated by the mafterly pencil, of Tacitus, the first of hiftorians who applied the fcience of philofophy to the ftudy of facts. The expreffive conciseness of his defcriptions has deferved to ex

4

IX.

IX.

CHAP. ercife the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, and to excite the genius and penetration of the philofophic hiftorians of our own times. The fubject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, fo ably, and fo fuccefsfully difcuffed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer. We shall therefore content ourselves with obferving, and indeed with repeating, fome of the most important circumftances of climate, of manners, and of inftitutions, which rendered the wild barbarians of Germany fuch formidable enemies to the Roman power.

Extent of

Ancient Germany, excluding from its independent Germany. limits the province weftward of the Rhine, which had submitted to the Roman yoke, extended itself over a third part of Europe. Almost the whole of modern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Pruffia, and the greater part of Poland, were peopled by the various tribes of one great nation, whose complexion, manners, and language denoted a common origin, and preserved a ftriking resemblance. On the weft, ancient Germany was divided by the Rhine from the Gallic, and on the south, by the Danube, from the Illyrian provinces of the empire. A ridge of hills, rifing from the Danube, and called the Carpathian Mountains, covered Germany on the side of Dacia or Hungary. The eastern frontier was faintly marked by the mutual fears of the Germans and the Sarmatians, and was often confounded by the mixture of warring and confederating tribes of the

two nations. In the remote darkness of the north, the ancients imperfectly defcried a frozen ocean that lay beyond the Baltic Sea, and beyond the Peninfula, or islands of Scandinavia.

I

Some ingenious writers have fufpected that climate. Europe was much colder formerly than it is at prefent; and the most ancient defcriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to confirm their theory. The general complaints of intenfe froft, and eternal winter, are perhaps little to be regarded, fince we have no method of reducing to the accurate ftandard of the thermometer, the feelings, or the expreffions of an orator, born in the happier regions of Greece or Afia. But I shall felect two remarkable circumftances of a lefs equivocal nature. 1. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube, were frequently frozen over, and capable of fupporting the most enormous weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads, transported, without apprehenfion or danger, their numerous armies, their cavalry, and their heavy waggons, over a vaft and folid bridge of ice'. Modern ages have not prefented an inftance of a like phænomenon. 2. The rein deer, that useful animal, from whom the favage of the North derives the best comforts of his dreary life, is of a conftitution that fupports, and even requires, the most intense cold! He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the Pole; he seems to delight in the fnows of Lapland and Siberia; but at present he cannot fubfift, much less multiply, in any country

1

CHAP.

IX.

Its effects

on the natives.

to the fouth of the Baltic *. In the time of Cæfar, * the rein deer, as well as the elk, and the wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian foreft, which then overshadowed a great part of Germany and Poland. The modern improvements fufficiently explain the caufes of the diminution of the cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared, which intercepted from the earth the rays of the fun. The moraffes have been drained, and, in proportion as the foil has been cultivated, the air has become more temperate. Canada, at this

day, is an exact picture of ancient Germany. Although fituated in the fame parallel with the finest provinces of France and England, that country experiences the most rigorous cold. The rein deer are very numerous the ground is covered with deep and lafting fnow, and the great river of St Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a feafon when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are ufually 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 most have al-· lowed, though, as it should feem, 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 fpecies more prolific,, than in warmer or more temperate climates. We may affert, with greater confidence, that the keen air of Germany formed the large and mafculine limbs of