woods, and designed to secure the women, children, and cattle, whilst
the warriors of the tribe marched out to repel a sudden invasion. [19]
But Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact, that the Germans, in his
time, had no cities; [20] and that they affected to despise the works of
Roman industry, as places of confinement rather than of security. [21]
Their edifices were not even contiguous, or formed into regular villas;
[22] each barbarian fixed his independent dwelling on the spot to which
a plain, a wood, or a stream of fresh water, had induced him to give the
preference. Neither stone, nor brick, nor tiles, were employed in these
slight habitations. [23] They were indeed no more than low huts, of a
circular figure, built of rough timber, thatched with straw, and pierced
at the top to leave a free passage for the smoke. In the most inclement
winter, the hardy German was satisfied with a scanty garment made of the
skin of some animal. The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed
themselves in furs; and the women manufactured for their own use a
coarse kind of linen. [24] The game of various sorts, with which the
forests of Germany were plentifully stocked, supplied its inhabitants
with food and exercise. [25] Their monstrous herds of cattle, less
remarkable indeed for their beauty than for their utility, [26] formed
the principal object of their wealth. A small quantity of corn was the
only produce exacted from the earth; the use of orchards or artificial
meadows was unknown to the Germans; nor can we expect any improvements
in agriculture from a people, whose prosperity every year experienced a
general change by a new division of the arable lands, and who, in that
strange operation, avoided disputes, by suffering a great part of their
territory to lie waste and without tillage. [27]

[Footnote 1601: Luden (the author of the Geschichte des Teutschen Volkes)
has surpassed most writers in his patriotic enthusiasm for the virtues
and noble manners of his ancestors. Even the cold of the climate, and
the want of vines and fruit trees, as well as the barbarism of the
inhabitants, are calumnies of the luxurious Italians. M. Guizot, on the
other side, (in his Histoire de la Civilisation, vol. i. p. 272, &c.,)
has drawn a curious parallel between the Germans of Tacitus and the
North American Indians.--M.]

[Footnote 17: Recherches Philosophiques sur
les Americains, tom. iii. p. 228. The author of that very curious work
is