Kings & rulers > History of the reign of the Emperor Charles V. > Volume 1

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immo quicquid vitiorum eft comprehendentes.,, Liut-
prandi Legatio apud Murat. Scriptor. Italic, vol. ii.
pars i. p. 481. This degeneracy of manners, illiterate
barbarians imputed to their love of learning. Even
after they fettled in the countries which they had con¬
quered, they would not permit their children to be in-
ftrudled in any fcience; <( for (faid they) inftrtnSion
in the fciences tends to corrupt, enervate, and deprefs
the mind ; and he who has been accuftomed to tremble
under the rod of a pedagogue, will never look on a fword
or fpear with an undaunted eye.” Procop. de bello
Gothor. lib. i. p. 4. ap. Scrip. Byz. edit, Venet. vol. i.
A confiderable number of years elapfed, before nations
fo rude, and fo unwilling to learn, could produce hif-
torians capable of recording their tranfaftions, or of
defcribing their manners and inftitutions. By that time,
the memory of their ancient condition was in a great
meafure loft, and few monuments remained to guide
their firft writers to any certain knowledge of it. If one
expedls to receive any fatisfaftory account of the man¬
ners and laws of the Goths, Lombards, or Franks, during
their refidence in thofe countries where they were ori¬
ginally feated, from Jornandes, Paulus Warnefridus, or
Gregory of Tours, the earlieft and moft authentic hif-
torians of thefe people, he will be miferably difappoint-
ed. Whatever imperfeft knowledge has been conveyed
to us of their ancient ftate, we owe not to their own
writers, but to the Greek and Roman hiftorians.
NOTE III. Sect. I. p. 5. [C].
A circumstance, related by Prifcus in his hiftory
of the embafly to Attila, king of the Huns, gives a
ftriking view of the enthufiaftic paftion for war which
prevailed among the barbarous nations. When the
entertainment, to which that fierce conqueror admitted
the Roman ambafladors, was ended, two Scythians ad¬
vanced towards Attila, and recited a poem in which
they celebrated his vidtories and military virtues. All
the Huns fixed their eyes with attention on the bards.
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