the Greeks and Romans owed more than they were aware, or were willing to allow, yet such has been the blindness of Europe for centuries, that the name of Goth has been an admitted epithet of opprobrium. It is unaccountable, but it is still a fact, that instead of admiring a people, who could annihilate so potent an empire as that of the Roman, we learn from Roman writers, and their too partial expounders, that no people on earth could be equal to the Romans themselves.

All Europe, we are told, was in an absolute state of barbarity, until reclaimed and civilized by the Romans. We are certainly indebted to them for many of the ideas we at present possess; and without their example the strain of our literature, together with that of our manners and policy, would have been very different. This, however, it may not be arrogant to say, that although the modern literature partakes much of the Latin refinement, and both one and the other of the Greek original, yet our forefathers could not in either instance have drank of this fountain, unless they had in some manner or other opened springs of their own. The amusements of the tilt-yard, I am Goth enough to believe, were more beneficial to man

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kind,

kind, than the exercises in the Roman circus, or the Olympic barriers. The tendency, indeed, of all was the same; to invigorate the faculties both of mind and body; to give strength, grace, and dexterity to the limbs; and to fire the mind with a generous emulation in the manly and martial exercises. Plato insists on the gymnastic exercises; and without it, it appears, he could not have formed, or at least have supported, his republic. But were not the Gothic tilts and tournaments superior, both in use and elegance, to the Grecian games of Olympia? The one did much less towards refining the manners, than the other. The Gothic gallantry had no ill influence on morals. The odd humour of Gothic days, was for the women to pride themselves in their chastity, and the men in their valour. High erected thoughts, seated in a heart of courtesy, was, according to an old writer, the proper character of such as had been trained in this discipline. The legends of ancient chivalry were as niches filled with statues, to invite young valours forth.* Together with a warlike spirit, the profession of chivalry impelled to every other virtue, the ornament of humanity. Affability, generosity, veracity, these were the qualifications most pretended to

*Ben Jonson.

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by the men of arms, in the days of pure and uncorrupted chivalry. Even in regard to letters, the first essays of wit and poetry, those harbingers of returning day, were made in the bosom of chivalry, and amidst the assemblies of noble dames and courteous knights. *

Of the early Gothic and Celtic story we have few remains. Among the Romans, on the contrary, historians arose, who transmitted with lustre their great actions to posterity. The actions of other nations are involved in fable, or lost in obscurity. The Gothic and Celtic nations afford a striking instance. The one trusted their fame to tradition and the songs of their bards; the other was so fettered by their Druids, that neither their religion, their laws, nor their history, were allowed to be committed to record; the preservation of the druidical supremacy depending upon the Druids always continuing the sole guardians and interpreters of all that related to morals, legislation, and government. Thus, says Elian, "the ancient Thracians, as well as in general all the Barbarians established in Europe, look upon the use of letters as contemptible and disgraceful; though at the same time they are cultivated with success by

Bishop Hurd.

the

the Barbarians established in Asia. Procopius also says, the Hunns held the same ideas; that they had not the secret of letters, nor could they be prevailed upon to hold them in estimation: honour and religion, from the suggestions of the Druids, both forbade literary and scientific instruction.

Yet, something after all would have remained to us, had it not been for the gross bigotry of the first Christian missionaries: but, ignorance of letters was as sedulously inculcated among the first Christian, German, and Gaulish nobles, as it was among their Pagan ancestors. It was considered beneath a man of the sword, to be trammelled by the shackles of intellect. All knowledge was confined to the monasteries. And hence a convent became just the same thing as a Druidical temple. Wills, donations, exemptions, privileges; in short, the disposition of all the good things of this world, as well as of the world to come, passed unavoidably through the agency of interest and superstition.

When I speak of Goths and Celts as being far advanced in a civilized state, I would not be understood as literally comparing them with the Europeans, for instance, of the present day.

The

The cultivation they possessed, and which we shall have occasion pretty minutely to examine, was not such as could boast of its experimental philosophy, electricity, meteorology, but above all, its sublime practical part of astronomy and navigation. Even we ourselves can only boast of a successful issue, in the painful and laborious researches we have made, in the paths pointed out to us by the sages of Greece and Rome. Their disciples in silence we indisputably are, notwithstanding we have risen upon the foundation they laid for the western world in general. Nor need we blush to say, that what was only known or guessed at by the profoundest abilities among the ancients, is now within the certain and positive knowledge of nine tolerably instructed men out of ten. But, this was not the case with the Goths and Celts. Nor shall I trouble you with a wanton attempt to deduce physics from traditionary fiction; at the same time, bear always in recollection, that what has been handed down to us of the Goths and Celts, has come from their implacable enemies; and that though the picture is meant to be hideous, you yet cannot discern any more deformed trace than that which was equally applicable to the Romans, who destroyed by arms and treachery one half of the human race, to hold the other

in