168 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxviii territories of Gaul and Britain, were less adapted to agriculture than to pasturage ; the wealth of the Britons consisted in their flocks and herds ; milk and flesh were their ordinary food ; and bread was sometimes esteemed, or rejected, as a foreign luxury. Liberty had peopled the mountains of Wales and the morasses of Armorica ; but their populousness has been maliciously ascribed to the loose practice of polygamy ; and the houses of these licentious barbarians have been supposed to contain ten wives and perhaps fifty children. 165 Their disposition was rash and choleric ; they were bold in action and in speech ; 166 and, as they were ignorant of the arts of peace, they alternately indulged their passions in foreign and domestic war. The cav- alry of Armorica, the spearmen of Gwent, and the archers of Merioneth were equally formidable ; but their poverty could sel- dom procure either shields or helmets ; and the inconvenient weight would have retarded the speed and agility of their desultory operations. One of the greatest of the English monarchs was requested to satisfy the curiosity of a Greek emperor concerning the state of Britain ; and Henry II. could assert, from his personal experience, that Wales was inhabited by a race of naked warriors, who encountered, without fear, the defensive armour of their enemies. 167 obscure or By the revolution of Britain, the limits of science, as well state of as of empire, were contracted. The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province was again lost among the fabulous islands of the Ocean. One hundred and fifty years after the reign of Honorius, the gravest historian of the times 168 describes 165 Regio longe lateque diffusa, milite, magis quam credibile Bit, referta. Par- tibus equidem in illis miles unus quinquaginta generat, sortitus more barbaro denas aut amplius uxores. This reproach of William of Poitiers (in the Historians of France, torn. xi. p. 88) is disclaimed by the Benedictine editors. 166 Q-iraldus Cambrensis confines this gift of bold and ready eloquence to the Romans, the French, and the Britons. The malicious Welshman insinuates that the English taciturnity might possibly be the effect of their servitude under the Normans. 167 The picture of Welsh and Armoriean manners is drawn from Giraldus (De- script. Cambrise, c. 6-15, inter Script. Camden, p. 886-891) and the authors quoted by the Abbe de Vertot (Hist. Critique, torn. ii. p. 259-266). 168 See Procopius de Bell. Gothic, 1. iv. c. 20, p. 620-625. The Greek historian is himself so confounded by the wonders which he relates, that he weakly attempts to distinguish the islands of Brittia and Britain, which he has identified by so many inseparable circumstances. [His Brettania is certainly Britain. His Brittia
