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BOOK whom the Nomadic, or Wandering, radiated like the modern settlers on the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and Oronooko, from civilized communities, into new circumstances of life and residence; into desolate solitudes, often grand and picturesque; but for a long time comfortless and appalling: where nature reigned in a state of magnificence, as to her vegetable and animal subjects, but diffused for some time terror, penury, and disease, to all that was intellectual and human. It was impossible for any portion of the civilized population of the world, to wander from their domestic localities, and to penetrate far into these unpeopled regions, without changing the character and habits of their minds; or without being followed by a progeny, still more dissimilar to every thing which they had quitted. In some, the alteration was a deteriorating process, declining successively into absolute barbarism. But in more, it became rather peculiarity, than perversion.

ORIGINAL forms of character, and many new and admirable habits and institutions, often grew up, in these abodes of want, exertion, independence, and vicissitudes. The loss of some of the improvements of happier society, was compensated by energies and principles, which that must necessarily sacrifice, or cannot obtain: and it will be nearer the actual truth, to consider the barbarous and civilized states of antiquity, as possessed of advantages distinct from each other; and perhaps not capable of continuous union, although often becoming intermingled, for a time, with mutual improvement.

In our late age of the world, the term barbarian is often correctly applicable to many countries

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which we have visited; but it will be unjust to the CHAP. ancestors of all modern Europe, not to consider, that the appellation had not anciently a meaning so directly appropriate. The Greeks denominated all nations as barbaroi but their own; although Egypt, Phenicia, Babylon, and Carthage had preceded them in civilization.

THE two ancient grand divisions of mankind, were not as strongly unlike, as the New Hollander, or Caffre, is to a modern European. They were at first to each other, what the Dorians were to the Athenians in Greece; the one a settled population, the other migratory. And though we may retain the expression of civilization, as the character of the settled races, it will less mislead our imaginations, if we call the other portion of mankind the Nomadic race. These had improvements and civilization of their own, though of a sterner and more hardy nature. They differed in attainments from their more polished relatives; but were not in all things their inferiors. It is unjust to degrade those with the appellation of barbarians, in the present meaning of the term, from whose minds, institutions, and manners, all that we now possess in civilization, superior to the most cultivated states of antiquity, has been principally derived. Our ancestors sprung from the great barbaric or Nomadic stock; and it may divest us of some of our unreasonable prejudices and false theories about them, if we make a rapid survey of the circumstances by which the two great classes of mankind have been principally distinguished.

Of these, THE CIVILIZED Were those nations who from their first appearance in history, have been found numerously and durably associated together;

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BOOK building fixed habitations; cultivating continuously the same soil; and fond of connecting their dwellings with each other into cities and towns, which, as external dangers pressed, they surrounded with walls. They multiplied inventions in the mechanic and manufacturing arts; allowed an individual property in ground and produce, to be acquired and transmitted; and guarded and perpetuated the appropriation, with all the terrors of law and civil power.

THEY became studious of quiet life, political order, social courtesy, pleasurable amusements, and domestic employments. They exercised mind in frequent and refined thought; pursued intellectual arts and studies; perpetuated their conceptions and reasonings by sculptured imagery, written language, and an improving literature; and valued those who excelled in mental studies. They promoted and preserved the welfare of their societies, by well arranged governments, which every citizen was desirous to uphold; by a vigilant policy, which they contentedly obeyed; and by laws, wise in their origin and general tenor, but often pursuing human actions with inquisitorial severity; with vindictive jealousy; with sanguinary punishments and with a minuteness and subtlety, which destroyed individual freedom, and bounded public improvement. They have usually loved religion; though they have made it a slavery, whose established superstitions it was treasonable to resist. They erected temples, oracles, and altars; they divided the energies and attributes of the Supreme Being, into distinct personalities, which they adored as divinities; made images and mythologies of each; devised and established a ceremonial worship, and permanent priesthood,

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which has usually been intimately connected with CHA P. their political government; and made the sanctioned teachers of the belief, morals and main opinions of their people.

BUT these civilized nations, notwithstanding all their improvements, and from the operation of some, have degenerated into sensuality; into the debasing vices, and to effeminate frivolities. The love of money, and a rapaciousness for its acquisition; and the necessities and false emulation, which continual luxuries create, have dissolved their social morality, and substituted a refined, but persevering and ever-calculating selfishness, for that mutual benevolence, which reason desires; which Christianity now enjoins; and which our best sympathies suggest. Superstition, irreligion, and despotism increase, as the moral attachments to probity and order lessen; and yet by their increase assist to undermine both loyalty and patriotism, as well as public happiness.

FACTIOUS violences on the one hand; legal oppressions and persecutions on the other; and an augmenting soldiery, every day becoming dangerous to the authorities that need them, from a practical sense of their own importance and power; and every day enfeebled by inefficient chiefs, because the promotion of talent is dangerous to its employers, and is impeded by the claims of the interested and powerful;-have often increased the evils of a voluptuary civilization, till states have subsided from secret and selfish disaffection, into feeble and disunited masses; which enemies have shaken, and powerful invaders at last subdued. Their mental progress, from all these causes, has been usually checked into that limited and station

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ary knowledge, soon becoming comparative ignorance, into which, even the cultivation and social comforts of civilization have hitherto invariably sunk; and from which the irruptions, spirit, and agencies of the Nomadic tribes, or the newer kingdoms which they have founded, have repeatedly rescued the human race.

THE other important part of the ancient population-that from which we have sprung-which the civilized world always contemplated with disdain, and frequently with horror, comprised those, who under various names, of which the Kimmerians, Kelts, Scythians, Goths, and Germans, are the most interesting to us, long preferred a wilder, roaming, and more independent life.

By these, the forests and the hills; the unbounded range of nature; the solitude of her retreats; the hardy penury of her heaths; the protection of her morasses; and the unrestricted freedom of personal exertion and individual humour; (though with all the privations, dangers, wars, and necessities that attend self-dependance, and even human vicinity, unassociated by effective government and vigilant laws,) have yet been preferred to crowded cities and confused habitations; to petty occupations and contented submission; to unrelaxing self-government and general tranquillity.

THIS NOMADIC class of mankind was composed of distinct families, that multiplied into separate tribes, living insulated from each other; and rarely coalescing into nations; though sometimes confederating for the purposes of war and depredation. Their primeval state was, in some, that of the shepherd, and in others, of the hunter. Or if any migratory clans paused awhile for agriculture, they

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