thia and Germany, soon turned his arms against the declining power of the Romans. In the year 441, he invaded the Eastern Empire. The Illyrian frontier was covered by a line of castles and fortresses : and, though part of them consisted only of a single tower with a small garrison, they were commonly sufficient to repel or to intercept the inroads of any enemy, who was ignorant of the art, and impatient of the delay, of a regular siege. But these obstacles were instantly swept away by the inundation of the Huns. They destroyed with fire and sword the populous cities of Sirmium and Singidunum, of Retiaria and Marcianopolis, of Naissus and Sardica; where every circumstance, in the discipline of the people and the construction of the buildings, had been gradually adapted to the sole purpose of defence. The whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred miles from the Euxine to the Hadriatic, 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 Thermopyla 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 irruption of the Huns : but words, the most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the calamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of the Eastern Empire'. Α 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 tempest, however, now burst over Gaul and Italy. After ravaging the former of these countries with savage barbarity, Attila turned his arms toward the seat of the Western Empire. Aquileia made a vigorous, but ineffectual, resistance and the succeeding generation could scarcely discover its ruins. The victorious barbarian 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: the rich plains of modern Lombardy were laid waste: and the ferocious Attila boasted, that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. 5. But, though the northern hail-storm thus beat upon the whole Roman earth, a third part of 1 Hist. of Decline, vol. vi. that earth alone was parched up by its continuance. The hail-stones formed a thick and permanent lodgment in the Western Empire only. From this portion of the figurative world they were never removed : and many ages of war and darkness followed, during which the fruits of peace and science and civilisation were completely blasted and burned ир. History, then, bears witness, that the effects of the hail-storm or the plague of the north-wind were these. The Roman earth was dreadfully desolated by it in all its three divisions : but, while the Eastern Empire recovered itself from the visitation, and while the Vandalic kingdom soon melted away in Africa, the Western Empire was permanently occupied and parcelled out into various sovereignties by the victorious warriors of the North. II. And the second angel sounded : and as it were a great mountain, burning with fire, was cast into the sea. And the third part of the sea became blood : and the third part of the creatures in the sea, which had life, died : and the third part of the ships was destroyed'. The hail-storm of the first trumpet, agreeably both to the decorum of the symbol and to the testimony of history, is the plague of the north-wind: the burning mountain of the second trumpet, therefore, must be the plague of a wind, which blows from some other cardinal point of the compass. | Rev. viii. 8, 9. |