uch times, as might be inferred from what has been already said,
their invasions have been rather irruptions, inroads, or, what are
called, raids, than a proper conquest and occupation of the countries
which have been their victims. They would go forward, 200,000 of them at
once, at the rate of 100 miles a day, swimming the rivers, galloping
over the plains, intoxicated with the excitement of air and speed, as if
it were a fox-chase, or full of pride and fury at the reverses which set
them in motion; seeking indeed their fortunes, but seeking them on no
plan; like a flight of locusts, or a swarm of angry wasps smoked out of
their nest. They would seek for immediate gratification, and let the
future take its course. They would be bloodthirsty and rapacious, and
would inflict ruin and misery to any extent; and they would do tenfold
more harm to the invaded, than benefit to themselves. They would be
powerful to break down; helpless to build up. They would in a day undo
the labour and skill, the prosperity of years; but they would not know
how to construct a polity, how to conduct a government, how to organize
a system of slavery, or to digest a code of laws. Rather they would
despise the sciences of politics, law, and finance; and, if they
honoured any profession or vocation, it would be such as bore
immediately and personally on themselves. Thus we find them treating the
priest and the physician with respect, when they found such among their
captives; but they could not endure the presence of a lawyer. How could
it be otherwise with those who may be called the outlaws of the human
race? They did but justify the seeming paradox of the traveller's
exclamation, who, when at length, after a dreary passage through the
wilderness, he came in sight of a gibbet, returned thanks that he had
now arrived at a civilized country. "The pastoral tribes," says the
writer I have already quoted, "who were ignorant of the distinction of
landed property, must have disregarded the use, as well as the abuse, of
civil jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent lawyer would excite
only their contempt or their abhorrence." And he refers to an outrage on
the part of a barbarian of the North, who, not satisfied with cutting
out a lawyer's tongue, sewed up his mouth, in order, as he said, that
the viper might no longer hiss. The well-known story of the Czar Peter,
himself a Tartar, is here in point. When told there were some thousands
of lawyers at W