are different from the usages prevalent before this intermixture, they are, in all probability, to be traced from the ancient manners and institutions of those northern tribes. We purpose to consider, 1, The original character of the Gothic nations; and, 2, The change of their manners on their establishment in the Roman empire.

2. The Scandinavian chronicles attribute to the ancient inhabitants of that country an Asiatic origin, and inform us that the Goths were a colony of Scythians, who migrated thither from the banks of the Black Sea and the Caspian: but these chronicles do not fix the period of this migration, which some later writers suppose to have been 1000 years, and others only seventy, before the Christian era. Odin, the chief deity of the Scandinavians, was the god of the Scythians. Sigga, a Scythian prince, is said to have undertaken a distant expedition; and, after subduing several of the Sarmatian tribes, to have penetrated into the northern parts of Germany, and thence into Scandinavia. He assumed the honours of divinity, and the title of Odin, his national God. He conquered Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and gave wise and salutary laws to the nations he had subdued by his arms.

3. The agreement in manners between the Scythians and the ancient Scandinavian nations is strongly corroborative of the accounts given in the northern chronicles of the identity of their origin. The description of the manners of the Germans by Tacitus (though this people was probably not of Scythian, but of Celtic origin) may, in many particulars, be applied to the ancient nations of Scandinavia; and the same description coincides remarkably with the account given by Herodotus of the manners of the Scythians. Their life was spent in hunting, pasturage, and predatory war. Their dress, their weapons, their food, their respect for their women, their religious worship, were the same. They despised learning, and had no other records for many ages than the songs of their bards.

4. The theology of the Scandinavians was most intimately connected with their manners. They held three great principles or fundamental doctrines of religion: "To serve the Supreme Being with prayer and sacrifice; to do no wrong or unjust action; and to be intrepid in fight." These principles are the key to the Edda, or sacred book, of the Scandinavians, which, though it contains the substance of a very ancient religion, is not itself a work of very high antiquity, being compiled in the thirteenth century by Snorro Sturleson, supreme judge of Iceland. Odin, characterized as the Terrible and Severe God, the Father of Carnage, the Avenger, is the principal deity of the Scandinavians; from whose union with Frea, the heavenly mother, sprung various subordinate divinities, as Thor, who perpetually wars against Loke and his evil giants, who envy the power of Odin, and seek to destroy his works. Among the

inferior deities are the Virgins of the Valhalla, whose office is to minister to the heroes in paradise. The favourites of Odin are all who die in battle, or, what is equally meritorius, by their own hand. The timid wretch who allows himself to perish by disease or age, is unworthy of the joys of paradise. These joys are, fighting, ceaseless slaughter, and drinking beer out of the skulls of their enemies, with a renovation of life, to furnish a perpetuity of the same pleasures.

5. As the Scandinavians believed this world to be the work of some superior intelligences, so they held all nature to be constantly under the regulation of an almighty will and power, and subject to a fixed and unalterable destiny. These notions had a wonderful effect on the national manners, and on the conduct of individuals. The Scandinavian placed his sole delight in war: he entertained an absolute contempt of danger and of death, and his glory was estimated by the number he had slain in battle. The death-song of Regner Lodbrok, who comforts himself in his last agonies by recounting all the acts of carnage he had committed in his life-time, is a faithful picture of the Scandinavian character.

The

6. We have remarked the great similarity of the manners of the Scandinavians and those of the ancient Germans. These nations seem, however, to have had a different origin. The Germans, as well as the Gauls, were branches of that great original nation termed Celta, who inhabited most of the countries of Europe to the south of the Baltic, before they were invaded by the northern tribes from Scandinavia. Celta were all of the Druidical religion; a system which, though different from the belief and worship of the Scandinavians, is founded nearly on the same principles; and the Goths, in their progress, intermixing with the Germans, could not fail to adopt, in part, the notions of a kindred religion. Druidism acknowledged a god that delighted in bloodshed; it taught the immortality of the soul, and inculcated the contempt of danger and of death: "Ignavum redituræ parcere vitæ." Tacitus remarks of the ancient Germans, that they had neither temples nor idols. The open air was the temple of the divinity, and a consecrated grove the appropriated place for prayer and sacrifice, which none but the priests were allowed to enter. The chief sacrifices were human victims, most probably the prisoners taken in war. The Druids heightened the sanctity of their character by concealing the mysteries of their worship. They had the highest influence over the minds of the people, and thus found it easy to conjoin a civil authority with the sacerdotal; a policy which in the end led to the destruction of the Druidical system; for the Romans found no other way of securing their conquests over any of the Celtic nations than by exterminating the Druids.

7. Whatever difference of manners there may have been among the various nations or tribes of Gothic origin, the great

features of their character appear to have been the same. Nature, education, and prevailing habits, all concurred to form them for an intrepid and conquering people. Their bodily frame invigorated by the climate they inhabited, ever inured to danger and fatigue, war their habitual occupation, believing in an unalterable destiny, and taught by their religion that a heroic sacrifice of life gave certain assurance of eternal happiness-how could a race of men so characterized fail to be the conquerors of the world?

SECTION LIX.

OF THE MANNERS, LAWS, AND GOVERNMENT OF THE GOTHIC NATIONS, AFTER THEIR ESTABLISHMENT IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

1. It has been erroneously imagined, that the same ferocity of manners which distinguished the Goths in their original seats, attended their successors in their new establishments in the provinces of the Roman empire. Modern authors have given a currency to this false idea. Voltaire, in describing the middle ages, paints the Goths in all the characters of horror; as "a troop of hungry wolves, foxes, and tigers, driving before them the scattered timid herds, and involving all in ruin and desolation." The accounts of historians most worthy of credit will dissipate this injurious prejudice, and show these northern nations in a more favourable point of view. as not unworthy io be the successors of the Romans.

2. Before the settlement in the southern provinces of Europe, the Goths were no longer idolators, but Christians; and their morality was suitable to the religion they professed. Salvianus, bishop of Marseilles, in the fifth century, draws a parallel between their manners and those of the Romans, highly to the credit of the former. Grotius, in his publication of Procopius and Jornandes, remarks, as a strong testimony to their honourable character as a nation, that no province once subdued by the Goths ever voluntarily withdrew itself from their government.

3. It is not possible to produce a more beautiful picture of an excellent administration than that of the Gothic monarchy in Italy under Theodoric the Great. Although master of the country by conquest, he was regarded by his subjects with the affection of a native sovereign. He retained the Roman laws, and as nearly as possible the ancient political regulations. In supplying all civil offices of state, he preferred the native RoIt was his care to preserve every monument of the ancient grandeur of the empire, and to embellish the cities by new works of beauty and utility. In the imposition and levying of taxes,

mans.

he showed the most humane indulgence, on every occasion of scarcity or calamity. His laws were dictated by the most enlightened prudence and benevolence, and framed on that principle which he nobly inculcated in his instructions to the Roman senate, "Benigne principis est, non tam delicta velle punire, quam tollere." The historians of the times delight in recounting the examples of his munificence and humanity. Partial as he was to the Arian heresy, many even of the Catholic fathers have done the most ample justice to his merits, acknowledging that under his reign the church enjoyed a high measure of prosperity. Such was Theodoric the Great, who was justly termed by Sidonius Apollinaris, "Romanæ decus columenque gentis."

4. But a single example could not warrant a general inference with regard to the merits of a whole people. The example of Theodoric is not single. If it does not find a complete parallel, it is at least nearly approached to, in the similar characters of Alaric, Amalasuntha, and Totila. Alaric, compelled by his enemy's breach of faith to revenge himself by the sack of Rome, showed even in that revenge a noble example of humanity. No blood was shed without necessity; the churches were inviolable asylums; the honour of the women was preserved; the treasures of the city were saved from plunder. Amalasuntha, the daughter of Theodoric, repaired to her subjects the loss of her father, by the equity and wisdom of her administration. She trained her son to the study of literature and of every polite accomplishment, as the best means of reforming and enlightening his people. Totila, twice master of Rome, which he won by his arms after an obstinate resistance, imitated the example of Alaric in his clemency to the vanquished, and in his care to preserve every remnant of ancient magnificence from destruction. He restored the senate to its authority; he adorned Rome with useful edifices, regulated its internal policy, and took a noble pride in reviving the splendour and dignity of the empire. "Habitavit cum Romanis," says a contemporary author, tanquam pater cum filiis."

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5. The stem of the Gothic nation divided itself into two great branches, the Ostrogoths, who remained in Pannonia, and the Westrogoths or Visigoths, so termed from their migrating thence to the west of Europe. Italy was possessed by the latter under Alaric, and by the former under Theodoric. The Visigoths, after the death of Alaric, withdrew into Gaul, and obtained from Honorius the province of Aquitaine, of which Thoulouse was the capital. When expelled from that province by the Franks, they crossed the Pyrenees, and, settling in Spain, made Toledo the capital of their kingdom. The race of the Visigoth princes was termed the Balti, as that of the Ostrogoths, the Amali. The Ostrogoths enforced in their dominions the observance of the Roman laws; the Visigoths adhered to a code compiled by their own sovereigns, and founded on the ancient manners and usages

of their nations. From this code, therefore, we may derive much information relative to the genius and character of this ancient people.

6. It is enacted by the Laws of the Visigoths, that no judge should decide in any law-suit, unless he finds in that book a law applicable to the case. All causes that fall not under this description are reserved for the decision of the sovereign. The penal laws are severe, but tempered with great equity. No punishment can affect the heirs of the criminal: "omnia crimina suos sequantur auctores ille solus judicetur culpabilis qui culpanda commiserit, et crimen cum illo qui fecerit moriatur." Death was the punishment of the murder of a freeman, and perpetual infamy of the murder of a slave.—Pecuniary fines were enacted for various subordinate offences, according to their measure of criminality. An adulterer was delivered in bondage to the injured husband; and the free woman who had committed adultery with a married man became the slave of his wife.No physician was allowed to visit a female patient but in the presence of her nearest kindred.-The Lex talionis was in great observance for such injuries as admitted of it. It was even carried so far, that the incendiary of a house was burned alive.— The trials by judicial combat, by ordeal, and by the judgment of God, which were in frequent use among the Franks and Normans, had no place among the Visigoths.-Montesquieu has erroneously asserted, that in all the Gothic nations it was usual to judge the litigants by the law of their own country; the Roman by the Roman law, the Frank by that of the Franks, the Aleman by that of the Alemans. On the contrary, the Visigoth code prohibits the laws of all other nations within the territories of that people: "Nolumus sive Romanis legibus, sive alienis institutionibus, amplius convexari." The laws of the Franks and Lombards are remarkable for their wisdom and judicious policy.

7. The government of the Goths, after their settlement in the Roman provinces, was monarchical; and at first elective, became afterwards hereditary; the sovereign on his death-bed appointing his successors, with the advice or consent of his grandees. Illegitimacy did not disqualify from succession or nomination to the throne.

8. The dukes and counts were the chief officers under the

Gothic government. The duke (dux exercitus) was the commander-in-chief of the troops of the province; the count (comes) was the highest civil magistrate; but these officers frequently intermixed their functions; the count being impowered, on sudden emergencies, to assume a military command, and the duke, on some occasions, warranted to exercise judicial authority. In general, however, their departments were distinct. Of comites there were various orders, with distinct official powers; as, comes cubiculi, chamberlain; comes stabuli, constable, &c. These various officers were the proceres or grandees of the kingdom; by