NOTE II. SECT. I. p. 4. [B].

THE barbarous nations were not only illiterate, but regarded literature with contempt. They found the inhabitants of all the provinces of the empire sunk in effeminacy, and averse to war. Such a character was the object of scorn to an high-spirited and gallant race of men. "When we would brand an enemy," says Liutprandus, "with the most disgraceful and contumelious appellation, we call him a Roman; hoc solo, id est Romani nomine, quicquid ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis, quicquid avaritiæ, quicquid luxuriæ, quicquid mendacii, immo quicquid vitiorum est comprehendentes." Liutprandi Legatio apud Murat. Scriptor. Italic. vol. ii. pars 1. p. 481. This degeneracy of manners, illiterate barbarians imputed to their love of learning. Even after they settled in the countries which they had conquered, they would not permit their children to be instructed in any science; "for (said they) instruction in the sciences tends to corrupt, enervate, and depress the mind; and he who has been accustomed to tremble under the rod of a pedagogue, will never look on a sword or spear with an undaunted eye." Procop. de bello Gothor. lib. i. p. 4. ap. Scrip. Byz. edit. Venet. vol. i. A considerable number of years elapsed, before nations so rude, and so unwilling to learn, could produce historians capable of recording their transactions, or of describing their manners and institutions. By that time, the memory of their ancient condition was

in a great measure lost, and a few monuments remained to guide their first writers to any certain knowledge of it. If one expects to receive any satisfactory account of the manners and laws of the Goths, Lombards, or Franks, during their residence in those countries where they were originally seated, from Jornandes, Paulus Warnefridus, or Gregory of Tours, the earliest and most authentic historians of these people, he will be miserably disappointed. Whatever imperfect knowledge has been conveyed to us of their ancient state, we owe not to their own writers, but to the Greek and Roman historians.

NOTE III. SECT. I. p. 6. [c].

A CIRCUMSTANCE, related by Priscus in his history of the embassy to Attila, king of the Huns, gives a striking view of the enthusiastic passion for war which prevailed among the barbarous nations. When the entertainment, to which that fierce conqueror admitted the Roman ambassadors, was ended, two Scythians advanced towards Attila, and recited a poem in which they celebrated his victories and military virtues. All the Huns fixed their eyes with attention on the bards. Some seemed to be delighted with the verses; others remembering their own battles, and exploits, exulted with joy; while such as were become feeble through age, burst out into tears, bewailing the decay of their vigour, and the state of inactivity in which they were now obliged to remain. Excerpta ex historia Prisci Rhetoris ap. Byzant. Histor. Script. vol. i. p. 45.

NOTE IV. SECT. I. p. 12. [D].

A REMARKABLE confirmation of both parts of this reasoning occurs in the history of England. The Saxons carried on the conquest of that country with the same destructive spirit which distinguished the other barbarous nations. The ancient inhabitants of Britain were either exterminated, or forced to take shelter among the mountains of Wales, or reduced to servitude. The Saxon government, laws, manners, and language, were of consequence introduced into Britain, and were so perfectly established, that all memory of the institutions previous to their conquest of the country, was, in a great measure, lost. The very reverse of this happened in a subsequent revolution. A single victory placed William the Norman on the throne of England. The Saxon inhabitants, though oppressed, were not exterminated. William employed the utmost efforts of his power and policy to make his new subjects conform in every thing to the Norman standard, but without success. The Saxons, though vanquished, were far more numerous than their conquerors; when the two races began to incorporate, the Saxon laws and manners gradually gained ground. The Norman institutions became unpopular and odious; many of them fell into disuse; and in the English constitution and language, at this day, many essential parts are manifestly of Saxon, not of Norman

extraction.

NOTE V. SECT. I. p. 13. [E].

PROCOPIUS, the historian, declines, from a principle of benevolence, to give any particular detail of the cruelties of the Goths: "Lest, says he, I should transmit a monument and example of inhumanity to succeeding ages." Proc. de bello Goth. lib. iii. cap. 10. ap. Byz. Script. vol. i. 126. But as the change, which I have pointed out as a consequence of the settlement of the barbarous nations in the countries formerly subject to the Roman empire, could not have taken place, if the greater part of the ancient inhabitants had not been extirpated, an event of such importance and influence merits a more particular illustration. This will justify me for exhibiting some part of that melancholy spectacle, over which humanity prompted Procopius to draw a veil. I shall not, however, disgust my readers by a minute narration; but rest satisfied with collecting some instances of the devastations made by two of the many nations which settled in the empire. The Vandals were the first of the barbarians who invaded Spain. It was one of the richest and most populous of the Roman provinces; the inhabitants had been distinguished for courage, and had defended their liberty against the arms of Rome, with greater obstinacy, and during a longer course of years, than any nation in Europe. But so entirely were they enervated by their subjection to the Romans, that the Vandals, who entered the kingdom A. D. 409, completed the conquest of it with such rapidity,

that in the year 411, these barbarians divided it among them by casting lots. The desolation occasioned by their invasion is thus described by Idatius an eye-witness: "The barbarians wasted every thing with hostile cruelty. The pestilence was no less destructive. A dreadful famine raged, to such a degree, that the living were constrained to feed on the dead bodies of their fellow-citizens; and all those terrible plagues desolated at once the unhappy kingdoms." Idatii Chron. ap., Biblioth. Patrum, vol. vii. p. 1233. edit. Lugd. 1677. The Goths having attacked the Vandals in their new settlements, a fierce war ensued; the country was plundered by both parties; the cities which had escaped from destruction in the first invasion of the Vandals, were now laid in ashes, and the inhabitants exposed to suffer every thing that the wanton cruelty of barbarians could inflict. Idatius describes these scenes of inhumanity, ibid. p. 1235. b. 1236. c. f. A similar account of their devastations is given by Isidorus Hispalensis, and other contemporary writers. Isid. Chron. ap. Grot. hist. Goth. 732. From Spain the Vandals passed over into Africa, A. D. 428. Africa was, next to Egypt, the most fertile of the Roman provinces. It was one of the granaries of the empire, and is called by an ancient writer, the soul of the commonwealth. Though the army with which the Vandals invaded it did not exceed 30,000 fighting men, they became absolute masters of the province in less than two years. A contemporary author gives a dreadful account of the havoc which they made: "They found a province well culti