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 foil. In the time of Tacitus, the Germans were little ufed to agriculture. "They cultivate," says that hiftorian, "fometimes one part of the country, and fometimes another; and then make a new divifion of the lands. They will much eafier be per- fuaded to attack and reap wounds from an enemy, than to till the ground and wait the produce. They confider it as an indication of effeminacy and want of courage to gain by the fweat of their brow, what they may acquire at the price of their blood *." This prejudice gradually wore out, and they applied them- felves more to agriculture. The great con- fumption of grain in a country, where the principal part of their food and their ordi- nary liquor was chiefly made of nothing elfe, could not but produce this effect. In the ninth and tenth centuries we fee the free-men, the nobility and the men of great property, directing the operations of husbandry themfelves +. At length Christianity
- Tac. Germ. c. 14, &c.
+ Vid. Arng. Jon. Crymog. lib. i. p. 52.
