Note 4 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Strangers to the arts which embellish a polished age, these people as they progressed in civilization, however slowly and rudely, gradually lost all the virtues which are found among savages. They looked upon literature with sovereign contempt:
“When we would brand an enemy,” says Liutprandus, “with the most disgraceful and contumelious appellation, we call him a Roman.” Instruction, they maintained, tends to corrupt, enervate, and depress the mind; and he who has been accustomed to tremble under a rod, will never look upon a spear or sword with an undaunted eye.