the kingdom of the Huns. In the first place, Attila himself was suddenly and prematurely seized by the hand of death, as he was meditating an attack on Rome, from which purpose he had been diverted the previous year; and in the next place, the Huns, after the loss of their king, returned without the bounds of the empire; and unlike the other barbarous nations, although they had left such indelible traces of their inroads, never had a fixed settlement within it it is the language of Gibbon, speaking of the fate of this people, “and finally extinguished the empire of the Huns."

The track pursued by Attila will be best given in the language of the historian, who, after naming the defences of the Illyrian frontier, says, "But these obstacles were instantly swept away by the inundation of the Huns. They attacked with fire and sword the populous cities of Sirmium and Singidunum, of Retiaria and Marcianopolis, of Niassus and Sardica, where every circumstance, in the discipline of the people, and the construction of the buildings, had been gradually adapted to the sole purposes of defence. The whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred miles from the Euxine to the Adriatic, was at once invaded, and occupied, and desolated by the myriads of barbarians whom Attila led into the field. The armies of the Eastern empire were vanquished in three successive engagements: and the progress of Attila may be traced by the fields of battle. From the Hellespont to Thermopylæ, and

the suburbs of Constantinople, he ravaged without resistance, and without mercy, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople might, perhaps, escape this dreadful eruption of the Huns but words expressive of the total extirpation or erasure, are applied to the calamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of the Eastern empire.— A pause at length seemed to take place: but it was a passing semblance, rather than a permanent reality. In the year 446, the Constantinopolitan emperor concluded an ignominious peace with Attila: but, in the year 450, the restless Hun threatened alike both the East and the West. Mankind awaited his decision with awful suspense."-The fiery mountain was however now cast into Gaul and Italy. After ravaging the former of those countries with his usual savage barbarity, he was at length stopped in the plains of Chalons by a great defeat from the allied Roman armies, "the last victory which was achieved in the name of the Western empire."

"Neither the spirit, nor the forces, nor the reputation of Attila, were impaired by the Gallic expedition. He passed the Alps, invaded Italy, and besieged Aquilea with an innumerable host of barbarians. The succeeding generation could scarcely discover its ruins. After this dreadful chastisement, Attila pursued his march; and, as he passed, the cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Padua, were reduced to heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns, Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of the

Huns. Milan and Pavia submitted without resistance to the loss of their wealth. Attila then spread his ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy; which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Appenines. It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass never grew where his horse had trod!”

THIRD. About two years after the death of Attila, and the evacuation of the Empire by the Huns, the third fatal blast sounded! and the formidable GENSERIC, king of the Vandals, a name already noticed under the first trumpet, and a name classed by Gibbon as of equal rank with that of Alaric and Attila in the destruction of the Western empire, fell as a great star burning as it were a lamp," upon those parts that were the channels and sources of its supplies and riches, and made them very "bitter." These parts, as it regarded the present prosperity of the Empire, were those of a maritime nature, and the dominion of the seas.

Genseric made the first serious commencement with the city of Rome itself; the pomp and luxury of which were, in the forty-five years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, in some measure restored. In the year 455, he sailed from the port of Carthage, and landed at the mouth of the Tiber; and Rome, so lately the queen of nations, was now utterly defenceless, and unable to resist the arms of a barbaric leader. During fourteen days and nights this great metropolis of the world was given up to the ferocity

sure.

of the Vandals, and the licentiousness of the Moors; and by these reckless hordes it was plundered of all that yet remained to it from former conquerors, of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treaAmong other spoils of the former kind, those which had been taken from the temple at Jerusalem, on its destruction by Titus nearly four hundred years before, were transferred, on this occasion, from Rome to Carthage. Having thus satiated at once his rapacity and his cruelty, the haughty Vandal hoisted sail, carrying with him immense treasures, and an innumerable multitude of captives, amongst whom were the empress Eudoxia, and her two daughters.

From this time, for many years onwards, the kingdom of Italy, a name to which the Western empire was gradually reduced, was afflicted and embittered by the incessant depredations of the Vandal pirates. "In the spring of each year they equipped a formidable navy in the port of Carthage; and Genseric himself, although in a very advanced age, still commanded in person the most important expeditions. His designs were concealed with impenetrable secrecy till the moment he hoisted sail. When he was asked by his pilot what course he should steer, Leave the determination to the winds (replied the barbarian with pious arrogance); they will transport us to the guilty coast whose inhabitants have provoked the Divine justice;' but if Genseric himself deigned to issue more precise orders, he judged the most wealthy to be the most criminal. The Vandals repeatedly visited the coasts

of Spain, Liguria, Tuscany, Campania, Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece, and Sicily: they were tempted to subdue the island of Sardinia, so advantageously placed in the centre of the Mediterranean; and their arms spread desolation or terror, from the columns of Hercules to the mouth of the Nile."

Thus, like a blazing meteor, did they fall upon the allegorical rivers and fountains of waters; "the celerity of their motions," adds the historian, "enabling them at the same time to threaten and to attack the most distant objects which attracted their desires; and as they always embarked a sufficient number of horses, they had no sooner landed than they swept the dismayed country with a body of light cavalry."

But this portentous star was only to make onethird of the waters thus become wormwood; and accordingly the unconscious testimony of the historian goes on to add, "the fury of the Vandals was confined to the LIMITS OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE!"* Genseric continued to be the tyrant of the sea, continuing his depredations for about the space of twenty years from the sack of Rome, and did not die until he had beheld the extinction of the empire of the West.

There is another and more emphatic sense in which he deserves the appellation of a star, or angel of a church,† inasmuch as he was the propagator and