taste for poetry is rather an amusement of the fancy, than a passion
of the soul. And yet, when in calm retirement we peruse the combats
described by Homer or Tasso, we are insensibly seduced by the fiction,
and feel a momentary glow of martial ardor. But how faint, how cold is
the sensation which a peaceful mind can receive from solitary study! It
was in the hour of battle, or in the feast of victory, that the bards
celebrated the glory of the heroes of ancient days, the ancestors of
those warlike chieftains, who listened with transport to their artless
but animated strains. The view of arms and of danger heightened the
effect of the military song; and the passions which it tended to
excite, the desire of fame, and the contempt of death, were the habitual
sentiments of a German mind. *

Such was the situation, and such were the manners of the ancient
Germans. Their climate, their want of learning, of arts, and of laws,
their notions of honor, of gallantry, and of religion, their sense of
freedom, impatience of peace, and thirst of enterprise, all contributed
to form a people of military heroes. And yet we find, that during more
than two hundred and fifty years that elapsed from the defeat of
Varus to the reign of Decius, these formidable barbarians made few
considerable attempts, and not any material impression on the luxurious
and enslaved provinces of the empire. Their progress was checked by
their want of arms and discipline, and their fury was diverted by the
intestine divisions of ancient Germany.

I. It has been observed, with ingenuity, and not without truth, that the
command of iron soon gives a nation the command of gold. But the rude
tribes of Germany, alike destitute of both those valuable metals, were
reduced slowly to acquire, by their unassisted strength, the possession
of the one as well as the other. The face of a German army displayed
their poverty of iron. Swords, and the longer kind of lances, they could
seldom use. Their frame (as they called them in their own language) were
long spears headed with a sharp but narrow iron point, and which, as
occasion required, they either darted from a distance, or pushed in
close onset. With this spear, and with a shield, their cavalry was
contented. A multitude of darts, scattered with incredible force, were
an additional resource of the infantry. Their military dress, when they
wore any, was nothing more than a loose mantle. A variety of colors was
the only or