stability of their manners is the natural consequence of the
imperfection of their faculties. Reduced to a similar situation, their
wants, their desires, their enjoyments, still continue the same: and
the influence of food or climate, which, in a more improved state
of society, is suspended, or subdued, by so many moral causes, most
powerfully contributes to form, and to maintain, the national character
of Barbarians. In every age, the immense plains of Scythia, or Tartary,
have been inhabited by vagrant tribes of hunters and shepherds, whose
indolence refuses to cultivate the earth, and whose restless spirit
disdains the confinement of a sedentary life. In every age, the
Scythians, and Tartars, have been renowned for their invincible courage
and rapid conquests. The thrones of Asia have been repeatedly overturned
by the shepherds of the North; and their arms have spread terror and
devastation over the most fertile and warlike countries of Europe.
On this occasion, as well as on many others, the sober historian is
forcibly awakened from a pleasing vision; and is compelled, with some
reluctance, to confess, that the pastoral manners, which have been
adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence, are much
better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a military life. To
illustrate this observation, I shall now proceed to consider a nation of
shepherds and of warriors, in the three important articles of, I. Their
diet; II. Their habitations; and, III. Their exercises. The narratives
of antiquity are justified by the experience of modern times; and
the banks of the Borysthenes, of the Volga, or of the Selinga, will
indifferently present the same uniform spectacle of similar and native
manners.

I. The corn, or even the rice, which constitutes the ordinary and
wholesome food of a civilized people, can be obtained only by the
patient toil of the husbandman. Some of the happy savages, who dwell
between the tropics, are plentifully nourished by the liberality of
nature; but in the climates of the North, a nation of shepherds is
reduced to their flocks and herds. The skilful practitioners of the
medical art will determine (if they are able to determine) how far the
temper of the human mind may be affected by the use of animal, or of
vegetable, food; and whether the common association of carnivorous
and cruel deserves to be considered in any other light than that of an
innocent, perhaps a salutary, prejudice of hu