pirations, what daring resolves, grew and strengthened
in the mind of the man who was the pioneer of that mighty revolution,
which swept from one quarter of the world the sway, the civilisation,
the very life and spirit of centuries of ancient rule! High thoughts
gathered fast in his mind; a daring ambition expanded within him--the
ambition, not of the barbarian plunderer, but of the avenger who had
come to punish; not of the warrior who combated for combat's sake, but
of the hero who was vowed to conquer and to sway. From the far-distant
days when Odin was driven from his territories by the romans, to the
night polluted by the massacre of the hostages in Aquileia, the hour of
just and terrible retribution for Gothic wrongs had been delayed
through the weary lapse of years, and the warning convulsion of bitter
strifes, to approach at last under him. He looked on the towering
walls before him, the only invader since Hannibal by whom they had been
beheld; and he felt as he looked, that his new aspirations did not
deceive him, that his dreams of dominion were brightening into proud
reality, that his destiny was gloriously linked with the overthrow of
Imperial Rome!

But even in the moment of approaching triumph, the leader of the Goths
was still wily in purpose and moderate in action. His impatient
warriors waited but the word to commence the assault, to pillage the
city, and to slaughter the inhabitants; but he withheld it. Scarcely
had the army halted before the gates of Rome, when the news was
promulgated among their ranks, that Alaric, for purposes of his own,
had determined to reduce the city by a blockade.

The numbers of his forces, increased during his march by the accession
of thirty thousand auxiliaries, were now divided into battalions,
varying in strength according to the service that was required of them.
These divisions stretched round the city walls, and though occupying
separate posts, and devoted to separate duties, were so arranged as to
be capable of uniting at a signal in any numbers, on any given point.
Each body of men was commanded by a tried and veteran warrior, in whose
fidelity Alaric could place the most implicit trust, and to whom he
committed the duty of enforcing the strictest military discipline that
had ever prevailed among the Gothic ranks. Before each of the twelve
principal gates a separate encampment was raised. Multitudes watched
the navigation of the Tiber in every possible dire