other Italian nation fubmitted to the Roman yoke. It was 200 years after that the Teutones and Cimbri, having traversed Gaul with an army of 300,000 men, again threatened Italy, and were totally defeated by Marius. During the first Roman emperors fome northern barbarians began to press on the frontiers of the empire in Illyria, Pannonia and Dacia ; but they were yet contained within their limits by its power, and ferved only to recruit the Roman. armies. It was not till the decline of that empire, in the fifth and following ages after Christ, that these invasions became frequent and formidable; and that feveral northern nations, the Francs, the Ger-. mans, the Huns, the Alani, the Goths, Vifigoths and Vandals, fucceffively broke in on all fides on that empire already crumbling under its own weight, and weakened by the corruption and indiscipline of its armies. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Saxons, Danes, and Normans invaded England and France. However barren the countries from whence all these invaders iffued, yet are we well affured that they were lefs cultivated, and confequently lefs populous, in those times than at present. It appears then that the first trifling and unconfequential northern invafions date not more than 2400 years before the prefent times; that the first of any importance took not place in Europe until the 5th century after Chrift; and that no northern nation made permanent conquefts in Afia until the 13th century. Every circumstance recorded in history proves that the temperature of Europe is not grown colder now than it was 1809

years ago; many indicate the contrary: the great irruptions of northern nations into Afia are too recent to suppose the smallest senfible change. Shall we then be told that the happy climates of Spitzberg, Siberia, or Norway, in those so very little diftant days nourished an immense and overflowing population? Mr. Bailly will not pretend it. We may then conclude, that no known irruption of northern nations gives the least support to this author's system ; but that it appears that the barren and uncultivated tracts of northern Afia and Europe fufficed, for more than 2000 years after the difperfion, for the fubfiftence of the population which had during all that period been very flowly spreading itself over those immense regions. It was not till after that lapse of time that those countries became overcharged with inhabitants, and that, forced by neceffity, those barbarians began collectively to prefs on their fouthern neighbours. It was from their first success in Media, which they held 28 years, that they firft began to learn to increase by industry beyond the pure boon of nature the means of fubfiftence; and it was not till they had done fo that they became fufficiently populous to be really formidable. The population of all Tartary is ftill very fcanty if compared with an equal extent of any cultivated country, and was from internal evidence much more fo before the times we speak of. The argument founded on an old popular prejudice inftilled by fear, is therefore not more folid than thofe forced inferences which our author has drawn from antient traditions glaringly

perverted

perverted to his purpose. That this has been every where the cafe, the fimple expofition of his evidences and of his conclufions fufficiently proves. On the other hand, the confequences which I had deduced from these and numberlefs fimilar records flow from them most naturally and without constraint. We can scarce diffemble to ourselves, that the groundwork of all these traditions seems originally laid on the fame foundations with the Mofaical accounts, every circumftance of which is to be found in fome one or other of them. Even the proper names made use of by that author, although: changed in fome nations by a vanity which appropriated to tliemfelves the fuppofed merit of prior antiquity, or adulterated to connect them with their abfurd mythology, appear without any alteration amongst thofe fimpler nations who have more fcrupulously preserved their antient traditions and genealogy. In one important point, the attestation of a general deluge, all these fcattered fragments concur with the whole general tenor of the history of man. We have already feen that this author, in a later publication, avows that its date cannot be carried with any probability higher than 3501 years before Chrift. The event itself, whether it happened a few centuries fooner or later, annihilates the whole system of Mr. de Buffon, which afferts the whole earth to have been in a state of ignition, and that it has been gradually cooling in a series of many thoufand years: whence he deduces the polar circles to have been the first poffible habitation of man, and that from thence all populaIi2 tion

tion proceeded. All the ingenious fubtleties of Mr. Bailly fail, as we have feen, to give the smallest support to this chimerical hypothefis, either from the traditions or hiftory of man, however distorted to the purpose. On the contrary, all history fhews us that the first appearance of great population was in fouth-western Afia and the fouthern countries moft contiguous to it; that from them, as from a centre, it was flowly spread to the neareft, and progreffively to more diftant regions; and that this extenfion happened so many ages after the date affigned by that author for the deluge, that there is thence great reafon to fufpect that it is by him removed several centuries beyond the truth; that at all times fince that period the northern parts both of Europe and Afia have been lefs cultivated and civilized, and consequently much less populous, than the fouthern. Our own knowledge affures us, that the former, though they have gained much in very recent times in all these refpects, by a greater intercourse with more polished nations, are yet, and are likely to continue feveral centuries, proportionably less populous than even the climate might permit, and that fear alone could have produced the idea that they at any time nourished an uncommon population. From no circumstance of tradition or history can it therefore be inferred, that the north was the original seat of mankind fince the general deluge, or that, as Mr. Bailly contends, all population was derived from thence. From that great event, the only fact concurrently and invariably teftified by all those traditions to which Mr.

Bailly has had recourfe, and the date of which they equally point out not to be very antient, the continued and connected traces every where discoverable of progreffive colonization from fouthern interior Afia give, on the contrary, the fairest and most unequivocal teftimonies that the renovation of mankind had there its commencement, and that population was thence flowly and gradually diffused both over the north and over every other part of the earth.

NOTES