cient for the gross purposes of
German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy,
and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of
intoxication. They attempted not, however, (as has since been executed
with so much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine
and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials
of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished
by arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate
thirst of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the
provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied
presents. The Tuscan who betrayed his country to the Celtic nations,
attracted them into Italy by the prospect of the rich fruits and
delicious wines, the productions of a happier climate. And in the same
manner the German auxiliaries, invited into France during the civil
wars of the sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous
quarters in the provinces of Champaigne and Burgundy. Drunkenness, the
most illiberal, but not the most dangerous of our vices, was sometimes
capable, in a less civilized state of mankind, of occasioning a battle,
a war, or a revolution.

The climate of ancient Germany has been modified, and the soil
fertilized, by the labor of ten centuries from the time of Charlemagne.
The same extent of ground which at present maintains, in ease and
plenty, a million of husbandmen and artificers, was unable to supply a
hundred thousand lazy warriors with the simple necessaries of life.
The Germans abandoned their immense forests to the exercise of hunting,
employed in pasturage the most considerable part of their lands,
bestowed on the small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, and
then accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to
maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of famine
severely admonished them of the importance of the arts, the national
distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of a third, perhaps,
or a fourth part of their youth. The possession and the enjoyment of
property are the pledges which bind a civilized people to an improved
country. But the Germans, who carried with them what they most valued,
their arms, their cattle, and their women, cheerfully abandoned the vast
silence of their woods for the unbounded hopes of plunder and conquest.
The innumerable swarms that issued, or seeme