island, and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable
spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than servitude
under the victors. He defeated them in a decisive action, which they
fought under Galgacus; and having fixed a chain of garrisons between the
friths of Clyde and Forth, he cut off the ruder and more barren parts of
the island, and secured the Roman province from the incursions of the
barbarous inhabitants. During these military enterprises he neglected not
the arts of peace. He introduced laws and civility among the Britons;
taught them to desire and raise all the conveniences of life; reconciled
them to the Roman language and manners; instructed them in letters and
science; and employed every expedient to render those chains, which he had
forged, both easy and agreeable to them." (Hume's Hist. vol. i. p. 9.) In
this passage Mr. Hume has given a summary of the Life of Agricola. It is
extended by Tacitus in a style more open than the didactic form of the
essay on the German Manners required, but still with the precision, both
in sentiment and diction, peculiar to the author. In rich but subdued
colors he gives a striking picture of Agricola, leaving to posterity a
portion of history which it would be in vain to seek in the dry gazette
style of Suetonius, or in the page of any writer of that period.]


1. The ancient custom of transmitting to posterity the actions and manners
of famous men, has not been neglected even by the present age, incurious
though it be about those belonging to it, whenever any exalted and noble
degree of virtue has triumphed over that false estimation of merit, and
that ill-will to it, by which small and great states are equally infested.
In former times, however, as there was a greater propensity and freer
scope for the performance of actions worthy of remembrance, so every
person of distinguished abilities was induced through conscious
satisfaction in the task alone, without regard to private favor or