study of facts. The expressive conciseness of his descriptions has
deserved to exercise the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, and to
excite the genius and penetration of the philosophic historians of our own
time." Upon a few sentences out of the "Germania"; which relate to the
kings, to the holding of land, to the public assemblies, and to the army;
an imposing structure of English constitutional history has been erected:
our modern historians look upon this treatise with singular approval;
because it shows them, they say, the habits of their own forefathers in
their native settlements. They profess to be enchanted with all they read;
and, in their works, they betray their descent from the ancestors they
admire. Gibbon says, prettily, "Whenever Tacitus indulges himself in those
beautiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic transaction of the
Germans or of the Parthians, his principal object is to relieve the
attention of the reader from an uniform scene of vice and misery." Whether
he succeeds, I must leave my readers to decide. Tacitus describes the
quarrels of the Germans; fought, then with weapons; now, with words: their
gambling, their sloth, their drunkenness. "Strong beer, a liquor extracted
with very little art from wheat or barley, and _corrupted_ (as it is
strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was
sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery." Tacitus informs
us, too, "that they sleep far into the day; that on rising they take a
bath, usually of warm water; then they eat." To pass an entire day and
night in drinking, disgraces no one: "Dediti somno ciboque," he says; a
people handed over to sloth and gluttony. Some of these customs are now
almost obsolete; the baths, for instance. In others, there has been little
alteration since the Age of Tacitus; and the Germans have adhered, with
obstinate fidelity, to their primitive habits. Tacitus thought less of
their capacity, upon the whole, than it is usual to think now: "The
Chatti," he says, "for Germans, have much intelligence;" "Leur
intelligence et leur finesse etonnent, dans des Germains." But let us