No More Learning

For the
change from the Republic to the Empire was hardly a revolution; and
the venerable names and forms of the old organisation were religiously
preserved. Still, the Consuls were elected, the Senate met and
legislated, Praetors and Legates went forth into the provinces, the
Legions watched upon the frontiers, the lesser Magistrates performed
their office; but above them was Caesar, directing all things,
controlling all things; the _Imperator_ and Universal Tribune, in whose
name all was done; the "Praesens Divus," on whom the whole depended; at
once the master of the Imperial Commonwealth, and the minister of the
Roman People.

"The Annals," and the history of Tiberius, have detained us, for the
most part, within the capital: "The Agricola" brings us into a province
of the Empire; and "The Account of Germany" will take us among the
savages beyond the frontier. I need scarcely mention, that our country
was brought within the Roman influence by Julius Caesar; but that
Caesar's enterprise was not continued by Augustus, nor by Tiberius;
though Caligula celebrated a fictitious triumph over the unconquered
Britons: that a war of about forty years was undertaken by Claudius,
maintained by Nero, and terminated by Domitian; who were respectively
"the most stupid, the most dissolute, and the most timid of all the
Emperors. " It was in the British wars, that Vespasian began his great
career, "monstratus fatis"; but the island was not really added to the
Empire, until Agricola subdued it for Domitian. "The Life of Agricola"
is of general interest, because it preserves the memory of a good and
noble Roman: to us, it is of special interest, because it records the
state of Britain when it was a dependency of the Caesars; "adjectis
Britannis imperio. " Our present fashions in history will not allow us
to think, that we have much in common with those natives, whom Tacitus
describes: but fashions change, in history as in other things; and in
a wiser time we may come to know, and be proud to acknowledge, that
we have derived a part of our origin, and perhaps our fairest
accomplishments, from the Celtic Britons. The narrative of Tacitus
requires no explanation; and I will only bring to the memory of my
readers, Cowper's good poem on Boadicea. We have been dwelling upon the
glories of the Roman Empire: it may be pardonable in us, and it is not
unpleasing, to turn for a moment, I will not say to "the too vast orb"
of our fate, but rather to that Empire which is more extensive than the
Roman; and destined to be, I hope, more enduring, more united, and more
prosperous. Horace will hardly speak of the Britons, as humane beings,
and he was right; in his time, they were not a portion of the Roman
World, they had no part in the benefits of the Roman government: he
talks of them, as beyond the confines of civility, "in ultimos orbis
Britannos;" as cut off by "the estranging sea," and there jubilant in
their native practices, "Visum Britannos hospitibus feros. " But Cowper
says, no less truly, of a despised and rebel Queen;

_Regions Caesar never knew,
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his Eagles never flew,
None invincible as they. _

The last battles of Agricola were fought in Scotland; and, in the pages
of Tacitus, he achieved a splendid victory among the Grampian hills.
Gibbon remarks, however, "The native Caledonians preserved in the
northern extremity of the island their wild independence, for which
they were not less indebted to their poverty than to their valour. Their
incursions were frequently repelled and chastised; but their country was
never subdued. The masters of the fairest and most wealthy climates of
the globe turned with contempt from gloomy hills assailed by the winter
tempest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist, and from cold and lonely
heaths, over which the deer of the forest were chased by a troop of
naked barbarians.
" The Scotch themselves are never tired of asserting,
and of celebrating, their "independence"; Scotland imposed a limit to
the victories of the Roman People, Scaliger says in his compliments to
Buchanan:

_Imperii fuerat Romani Scotia lines. _

But it may be questioned, whether it were an unmixed blessing, to
be excluded from the Empire; and to offer a sullen resistance to its
inestimable gifts of humane life, of manners, and of civility.

To these things, the Germans also have manifested a strong dislike; and
they are more censurable than the Scotch, because all their knowledge of
the Romans was not derived from the intercourse of war. "The Germany"
of Tacitus is a document, that has been much discussed; and these
discussions may be numbered among the most flagrant examples of literary
intemperance: but this will not surprise us, when we allow for the
structure of mind, the language, and the usual productions of those,
to whom the treatise is naturally of the greatest importance. In the
description of the Germans, Tacitus goes out of his way to laugh at the
"licentia vetustatis," "the debauches of pedants and antiquarians;"
as though he suspected the fortunes of his volume, and the future
distinctions of the Teutonic genius. For sane readers, it will be enough
to remark, that the Germany of Tacitus was limited, upon the west, by
the natural and proper boundary of the Rhine; that it embraced a portion
of the Low Countries; and that, although he says it was confined within
the Danube, yet the separation is not clear between the true Germans and
those obscurer tribes, whose descendants furnish a long enumeration
of titles to the present melancholy sovereign of the House of Austria.
Gibbon remarks, with his usual sense, "In their primitive state of
simplicity and independence, the Germans were surveyed by the discerning
eye, and delineated by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first
historian who supplied the science of philosophy to the study of facts.
The expressive conciseness of his descriptions has deserved to exercise
the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, and to excite the genius and
penetration of the philosophic historians of our own time. " Upon a
few sentences out of the "Germania"; which relate to the kings, to the
holding of land, to the public assemblies, and to the army; an imposing
structure of English constitutional history has been erected: our modern
historians look upon this treatise with singular approval; because
it shows them, they say, the habits of their own forefathers in their
native settlements. They profess to be enchanted with all they read;
and, in their works, they betray their descent from the ancestors they
admire. Gibbon says, prettily, "Whenever Tacitus indulges himself in
those beautiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic transaction
of the Germans or of the Parthians, his principal object is to relieve
the attention of the reader from an uniform scene of vice and misery. "
Whether he succeeds, I must leave my readers to decide. Tacitus
describes the quarrels of the Germans; fought, then with weapons; now,
with words: their gambling, their sloth, their drunkenness. "Strong
beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley,
and _corrupted_ (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain
semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German
debauchery. " Tacitus informs us, too, "that they sleep far into the day;
that on rising they take a bath, usually of warm water; then they eat. "
To pass an entire day and night in drinking, disgraces no one: "Dediti
somno ciboque," he says; a people handed over to sloth and gluttony.