fcarce any magiftrates: yet have they great humanity, a natural foftnefs of difpofition, and a very hofpitable temper.
They were nearly the fame in the time of Tacitus. "The FINNS *," he fays, live in extreme favageneſs, in fquallid poverty: have neither arms, nor fteeds, nor houfes. Herbs are their food, fkins their cloathing, the earth their bed. All their refource is their arrows, which they point with fifh-bones, for want of iron. Their women live by hunting, as well as the men. For they every where accompany them, and gain their fhare of the prey. A rude hovel ſhelters their infants from the inclemencies of the weather, and the beafts of prey. Such is the home to which their young men return; the afylum to which the old retire. This kind of life they think more happy, than the painful toils of agriculture, than the various labours of domeftic management, than that circle of hopes and fears, in which men are involved by their attention to the fortune of themſelves and others. Equally secure both as to gods and men, the Finns
FENNI. TACIT. De morib. Germ. ad fin.
This seems to contradict the paffage above, that herbs are their food: I suppose herbs were their ordinary food; flefh gained by hunting their regale.
