inconstancy, and want of faith in dealings and contracts of a commercial nature, feem to be characteristic qualities of rude nations. The love of justice fways only the minds of those who have a lively fenfe of its beauty and utility; while, even in refined fociety, the great part of the vulgar are restrained from the violation of justice by fear of the chastisement of the law.

ORIGIN

O F

MARRIAGE.

ACITUS has given us an account of the

TACITUS ha

Fenni, a German nation, as he inclined to think, whofe mode of life appeared to be little removed from that of the gregarious animals of the field: "Fennis mira feritas, fada paupertas, ❝non arma, non equi, non penates: victui "herba, veftitui pelles, cubile humus. Sola in "fagittis fpes, quas inopia ferri offibus afperant. "Idemque venatus viros pariter ac feminas alit. "Paffim enim comitantur, partemque predæ peNec aliud infantibus ferarum imbrium

❝ tunt.

66

que fuffugium, quam ut in aliquo ramorum "nexu contegantur. Huc redeunt juvenes, hoc

❝ fenum.

❝fenum receptaculum *."

This race of people

lived chiefly by hunting: their fubfiftence depended upon their daily acquifitions. They fed partly upon herbs. They clothed themselves with the fkins of beafts, and flept upon the ground. Their arrows, being their only weapons, were pointed with bones. They knew not the use of horfes. They worshipped no deities. A covering made of boughs fheltered their infants from the weather, and defended them from beafts of prey. These were the receptacles of their young and old of both fexes. The Ichthiophagi, a people of Arabia Felix, went naked. They lived on fish, and dwelt in rude houfes made of the bones of fifhés and of fhells. Their wives and children were in common among them †.

THE accounts given of these nations by antient authors, have obtained no high degree of

Tac, Germ. c. 46.

Diodor. Sic. lib. iii. Strabo, lib. xv. Arrian. Hift. Ind.

credit even from the learned of modern times. The existence of human beings living in fuch a ftate of wildness, nearly upon a level with the herding animals of the brute creation, has been confidered to be more indebted to imagination. than to reality.

THE difcoveries of modern times have put beyond doubt the existence of focieties of the human race living in a fimilar state with thofe described by the Greek and Roman authors. The inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, in South America, live in a ftate nearly fimilar to the Ichthiophagi, and equally wild and free *.

IN that part of New Holland to which our navigators have given the name of South Wales, "both fexes go stark naked, and seem to have ❝ no more sense of indecency in difcovering the "whole body, than we have in discovering our

* Banks's and Cook's firft Voyage.

"hands