recollect, that if an individual in such times were to arise, of a capacity to frame schemes of legislation and government, he could not reduce them to execution. He could not mould the conceptions of states, to correspond to his own. It is from no pre-conceived plan, but from circumstances which exist in real life and affairs, that legislators and politicians acquire an ascendancy among men. It was the actual condition of their times, not projects suggested by philosophy and speculation, that directed the conduct of Lycurgus and Solon.

The historical progress of the Goths does not come within the compass of our design. I shall therefore dispatch that part of our subject as expeditiously as possible. In 408 Alaric, with his Hunns, Goths, or Scythians, invested Rome. The senate, reduced to the most dastardly apprehension, engaged to pay him a large sum of money, and to give him hostages for the fidelity of their engagements. The Emperor Honorius, however, regardless of the faith thus pledged in the Roman name, evaded fulfilling the articles of the stipulation. Alaric, in consequence, returned, and marching directly to Rome, the city opened her gates to him, and he caused Attalus, an Ionian, to be proclaimed Emperor.

This

This was in 409. Two years afterwards, Alaric displaced Attalus, and restored Honorius, whom he again quarrelled with, and deposed. He then gave Rome to be plundered, for six days, to his soldiery. Most of the people were massacred, and the greatest part of the city was reduced to ashes. This was the third sack of Rome by the Scythians. Thus eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of the imperial city, which had subdued so considerable a part of mankind, it fell before the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia. At the same time, however, it is not to be forgotten, that the proclamation of Alaric, on his entrance into the vanquished city, was strongly expressive of his regard for the laws of humanity and religion.

In 441, Attila having succeeded his father, and having made peace with the Romans, conquered all the nations on the north side of the Euxine Sea, and made his son Ellac king over them. He demanded also all the Hunns, who had sheltered themselves in the Roman empire; but, upon being refused, he fell upon the eastern provinces, and put all to fire and sword, forcing the Emperor to retire from Constantinople into Asia.

Cc 4

* Universal History.

+ Gibbon.

Asia. The next year, Theodosius was forced to conclude a second shameful peace with Attila, and to bribe him into better temper. Attila was sole master of all Scythia and Germany. * No prince ever subdued so many countries in so short a time; his authority being acknowledged by all the states and princes, from the Rhine to the most northern borders of the Persian empire. When he entered Gaul in 451, he was † attended by a troop of sovereigns, who stood trembling before him. They looked upon his decisions as oracles, and submitted to him as to the king of kings.

Long before this, indeed, and when the Roman arms had not as yet declined from their pristine vigour, the country of Pannonia and Dalmatia, which occupied the space between the Danube and the Adriatic, and which was, subsequently, the peculiar residence of the Hunns, was one of the last and most difficult conquests of the empire. In the defence of national freedom, two hundred thousand of its warlike inhabitants had once appeared in the field, alarmed the declining age of Augustus, and exercised the vigilant prudence of Tiberius

at

Jornandes. + Priscus,

Universal History.

at the head of the collected forces of the state. * To make an end, however, of our enumeration; in 458, the year in which Hengist, the Saxon, overcame Vortigern in Britain, Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, reduced the Suevi in Gallicia, and entered Lusitania. In 461, Genseric ravaged the coasts of Italy and Sicily. In 464, the Visigoths made themselves masters of a great part of Spain; and in 468, totally defeated the Romans, and drove them entirely out of that part of Europe; and shortly after, made themselves masters of the far greater part of Gaul; this was in the year 480.

*Velleius Paterculus.

LET.

LETTER LXXIII.

WE now recur to our former subject. The course of migration, among the nations of the ancient world, as far as it can be traced through antiquity, has been uniformly from the north and east, to the south and west. The polished nations of Europe, therefore, who now excel antiquity itself in arts, and vie with it in arms, owe their cultivation, and many of their best attainments, to the emphatically named Barbarians; which word, by the way, has not been over accurately applied, as Barbaroi were shepherds. In Hebrew they were called Phut. In other languages they were called Berberi. From their places of habitation, the territory they occupied was called Barbaria by the Greeks and Romans. Berber signifies shepherd.* Notwithstanding this, and although almost all Europe is possessed by the immediate or the collateral descendants of the Goths, a people also to whom the

Bruce.