ity, as it was conducive to mutual interest. An army
of fourscore thousand Burgundians soon appeared on the banks of
the Rhine; and impatiently required the support and subsidies which
Valentinian had promised: but they were amused with excuses and delays,
till at length, after a fruitless expectation, they were compelled to
retire. The arms and fortifications of the Gallic frontier checked the
fury of their just resentment; and their massacre of the captives served
to imbitter the hereditary feud of the Burgundians and the Alemanni.
The inconstancy of a wise prince may, perhaps, be explained by some
alteration of circumstances; and perhaps it was the original design of
Valentinian to intimidate, rather than to destroy; as the balance of
power would have been equally overturned by the extirpation of either of
the German nations. Among the princes of the Alemanni, Macrianus, who,
with a Roman name, had assumed the arts of a soldier and a statesman,
deserved his hatred and esteem. The emperor himself, with a light and
unencumbered band, condescended to pass the Rhine, marched fifty miles
into the country, and would infallibly have seized the object of
his pursuit, if his judicious measures had not been defeated by the
impatience of the troops. Macrianus was afterwards admitted to the
honor of a personal conference with the emperor; and the favors which
he received, fixed him, till the hour of his death, a steady and sincere
friend of the republic.

The land was covered by the fortifications of Valentinian; but the
sea-coast of Gaul and Britain was exposed to the depredations of the
Saxons. That celebrated name, in which we have a dear and domestic
interest, escaped the notice of Tacitus; and in the maps of Ptolemy, it
faintly marks the narrow neck of the Cimbric peninsula, and three small
islands towards the mouth of the Elbe. This contracted territory, the
present duchy of Sleswig, or perhaps of Holstein, was incapable of
pouring forth the inexhaustible swarms of Saxons who reigned over the
ocean, who filled the British island with their language, their laws,
and their colonies; and who so long defended the liberty of the North
against the arms of Charlemagne. The solution of this difficulty is
easily derived from the similar manners, and loose constitution, of the
tribes of Germany; which were blended with each other by the slightest
accidents of war or friendship. The situation of the native Saxons
disposed them to emb