r branch of the Saxons has been,
from the beginning of history, the least cruel people in Europe; but they
had the reputation--as the Vandals had also--of being the most pure;
Castitate venerandi. And among the uncivilized people coldness and
cruelty go often together. The less passionate and sensitive the nature,
the less open to pity. The Caribs of the West Indies were famed for
both, in contrast to the profligate and gentle inhabitants of Cuba and
Hispaniola; and in double contrast to the Red Indian tribes of North
America, who combined, from our first acquaintance with them, the two
vices of cruelty and profligacy, to an extent which has done more to
extirpate them than all the fire-water of the white man.

But we must be careful how we compare our forefathers with these, or any
other savages. Those who, like Gibbon, have tried to draw a parallel
between the Red Indian and the Primaeval Teuton, have done so at the
expense of facts. First, they have overlooked the broad fact, that while
the Red Indians have been, ever since we have known them, a decreasing
race, the Teutons have been a rapidly increasing one; in spite of war,
and famine, and all the ills of a precarious forest life, proving their
youthful strength and vitality by a reproduction unparalleled, as far as
I know, in history, save perhaps by that noble and young race, the
Russian. These writers have not known that the Teuton had his definite
laws, more simple, doubtless, in the time of Tacitus than in that of
Justinian, but still founded on abstract principles so deep and broad
that they form the groundwork of our English laws and constitution; that
the Teuton creed concerning the unseen world, and divine beings, was of a
loftiness and purity as far above the silly legends of Hiawatha as the
Teuton morals were above those of a Sioux or a Comanche. Let any one
read honest accounts of the Red Indians; let him read Catlin, James,
Lewis and Clarke, Shoolbred; and first and best of all, the old 'Travaile
in Virginia,' published by the Hakluyt Society: and then let him read the
Germania of Tacitus, and judge for himself. For my part, I believe that
if Gibbon was right, and if our forefathers in the German forests had
been like Powhattan's people as we found them in the Virginian forests,
the Romans would not have been long in civilizing us off the face of the
earth.

No. All the notes which Tacitus gives us are notes of a young and strong
race; uncons