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As long as this inclination had its full sway among a people, who were perpetually migrating from one forest to another, and entirely maintained from the produce of their flocks and herds, they never thought of cultivating the soil. In the time of Tacitus, the Germans were little used to agriculture. “They cultivate,” says that historian, “sometimes one part of the country, and sometimes another; and then make a new division of the lands. They will much easier be persuaded to attack and reap wounds from an enemy, than to till the ground and wait the produce. They consider it as an indication of effeminacy and want of courage to gain by the sweat of their brow, what they may acquire at the price of their blood[1].” This prejudice gradually wore out, and they applied themselves more to agriculture. The great consumption of grain in a country, where the principal part of their food and their ordinary liquor was chiefly made of nothing else, could not but produce this effect. In the ninth and tenth centuries we see the free-men, the nobility and the men of great property, directing the operations of husbandry themselves[2]. At length Christianity
- ↑ Tac. Germ. c. 14, &c.
- ↑ Vid. Arng. Jon. Crymog. lib. i. p. 52.
