OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 257 philosophic minds can seldom refrain from investigat- CHAP, ing the infancy of great nations, our curiosity consumes ______ itself in toilsome and disappointed efforts. When Tacitus considered the purity of the German blood, and the forbidding aspect of the country, he was disposed to pronounce those barbarians indigenes, or natives of the soil. We may allow with safety, and perhaps with truth, that ancient Germany was not originally peopled by any foreign colonies, already formed into a political society ™ ; but that the name and nation received their existence from the gradual union of some wandering savages of the Hercynian woods. To assert those sa- vages to have been the spontaneous production of the earth which they inhabited, would be a rash in- ference, condemned by religion, and unwarranted by reason. Such rational doubt is but ill suited with the genius of Fables and popular vanity. Among the nations who have adopted ^°"J^^ ^^^^' the Mosaic history of the world, the ark of Noah has been of the same use, as was formerly to the Greeks and Romans the siege of Troy. On a narrow basis of acknowledged truth, an immense but rude superstruc- ture of fable has been erected; and the wild Irishman", as well as the wild Tartar °, could point out the indi- vidual son of Japhet, from whose loins his ancestors were lineally descended. The last century abounded with antiquarians of profound learning and easy faith, who, by the dim light of legends and traditions, of con- jectures and etymologies, conducted the great grand- children of Noah from the tower of Babel to the ex- '" Tacit. German, c. 3. The emigration of the Gauls followed the course of the Danube, and discharged itself on Greece and Asia. Tacitus could discover only one inconsiderable tribe that retained any traces of a Gallic origin. " According to Dr. Keating, (History of Ireland, p. 13, 14.) the giant Partholanus, who was the son of Seara, the son of Esra, the son of Sru, the son of Framant, the son of Fathaclan, the son of Magog, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah, landed on the coast of Munster, the fourteenth day of May, in the year of the world 1978. Though he succeeded in his great enterprise, the loose behaviour of his wife rendered his domestic life very unhappy, and provoked him to such a degree, that he killed — her favourite grey- hound. This, as the learned historian very properly observes, was thejirst instance of female falsehood and infidelity ever known in Ireland. " Genealogical History of the Tartars by Abulghazi Bahadur Khan. VOL. I. S
