d; and the great chain of mutual dependence
connects and embraces the several members of society. The most numerous
portion of it is employed in constant and useful labor. The select few,
placed by fortune above that necessity, can, however, fill up their time
by the pursuits of interest or glory, by the improvement of their estate
or of their understanding, by the duties, the pleasures, and even the
follies of social life. The Germans were not possessed of these varied
resources. The care of the house and family, the management of the
land and cattle, were delegated to the old and the infirm, to women and
slaves. The lazy warrior, destitute of every art that might employ his
leisure hours, consumed his days and nights in the animal gratifications
of sleep and food. And yet, by a wonderful diversity of nature,
(according to the remark of a writer who had pierced into its darkest
recesses,) the same barbarians are by turns the most indolent and
the most restless of mankind. They delight in sloth, they detest
tranquility. The languid soul, oppressed with its own weight, anxiously
required some new and powerful sensation; and war and danger were the
only amusements adequate to its fierce temper. The sound that summoned
the German to arms was grateful to his ear. It roused him from his
uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active pursuit, and, by strong
exercise of the body, and violent emotions of the mind, restored him to
a more lively sense of his existence. In the dull intervals of peace,
these barbarians were immoderately addicted to deep gaming and excessive
drinking; both of which, by different means, the one by inflaming their
passions, the other by extinguishing their reason, alike relieved them
from the pain of thinking. They gloried in passing whole days and nights
at table; and the blood of friends and relations often stained their
numerous and drunken assemblies. Their debts of honor (for in that light
they have transmitted to us those of play) they discharged with the most
romantic fidelity. The desperate gamester, who had staked his person and
liberty on a last throw of the dice, patiently submitted to the decision
of fortune, and suffered himself to be bound, chastised, and sold into
remote slavery, by his weaker but more lucky antagonist.

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 suffi