e, and even a greater, difference will be found
between nations than between individuals; and we may safely pronounce,
that without some species of writing, no people has ever preserved the
faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress
in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of
perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.

Of these arts, the ancient Germans were wretchedly destitute. They
passed their lives in a state of ignorance and poverty, which it has
pleased some declaimers to dignify with the appellation of virtuous
simplicity. * Modern Germany is said to contain about two thousand three
hundred walled towns. In a much wider extent of country, the geographer
Ptolemy could discover no more than ninety places which he decorates
with the name of cities; though, according to our ideas, they would but
ill deserve that splendid title. We can only suppose them to have
been rude fortifications, constructed in the centre of the woods, and
designed to secure the women, children, and cattle, whilst the warriors
of the tribe marched out to repel a sudden invasion. But Tacitus
asserts, as a well-known fact, that the Germans, in his time, had no
cities; and that they affected to despise the works of Roman industry,
as places of confinement rather than of security. Their edifices were
not even contiguous, or formed into regular villas; each barbarian fixed
his independent dwelling on the spot to which a plain, a wood, or a
stream of fresh water, had induced him to give the preference. Neither
stone, nor brick, nor tiles, were employed in these slight habitations.
They were indeed no more than low huts, of a circular figure, built of
rough timber, thatched with straw, and pierced at the top to leave a
free passage for the smoke. In the most inclement winter, the hardy
German was satisfied with a scanty garment made of the skin of some
animal. The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed themselves in
furs; and the women manufactured for their own use a coarse kind of
linen. The game of various sorts, with which the forests of Germany were
plentifully stocked, supplied its inhabitants with food and exercise.
Their monstrous herds of cattle, less remarkable indeed for their beauty
than for their utility, formed the principal object of their wealth. A
small quantity of corn was the only produce exacted from the earth; the
use of orchards or artificial meadows was unknown