Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/283

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 259 and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that CHAP. distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages '_ incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge ; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers ; the judgement becomes feeble and lethargic, the ima- gination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The for- mer, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own ex- perience, and lives in distant ages and remote coun- tries; whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses but very little his fellow labourer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties. The same, 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 con- siderable 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 of arts and destitute. They passed their lives in a state of igno- ^^"^" ^'^'^ ' ranee and poverty, which it has pleased some declaimers to dignify with the appellation of virtuous simplicity. Modern Germany is said to contain about two thou- sand three hundred walled towns ^. In a much wider extent of country, the geographer Ptolemy could dis- cover no more than ninety places, which he decorates with the name of cities®; though, according to our We may add, that the oldest Runic inscriptions are supposed to be of the third century, and the most ancient writer who mentions the Runic charac- ters is Venantius Fortunatus, (Carm. vii. 18.) who lived towards the end of the sixth century. Barbara fraxineis pingatur Runa tabellis. •■ Recherches Philosophiques sur les Am^ricains, torn. iii. p. 228. The au- thor of that very curious work is, if I am not misinformed, a German by birth. ■ The Alexandrian geographer is often criticised by the accurate Cluverius. s2