ons of their corrupt
eloquence. The vehement Jerom might justly deplore the calamities
inflicted by the Goths, and their barbarous allies, on his native
country of Pannonia, and the wide extent of the provinces, from the
walls of Constantinople to the foot of the Julian Alps; the rapes, the
massacres, the conflagrations; and, above all, the profanation of the
churches, that were turned into stables, and the contemptuous treatment
of the relics of holy martyrs. But the Saint is surely transported
beyond the limits of nature and history, when he affirms, "that, in
those desert countries, nothing was left except the sky and the earth;
that, after the destruction of the cities, and the extirpation of the
human race, the land was overgrown with thick forests and inextricable
brambles; and that the universal desolation, announced by the prophet
Zephaniah, was accomplished, in the scarcity of the beasts, the birds,
and even of the fish." These complaints were pronounced about twenty
years after the death of Valens; and the Illyrian provinces, which were
constantly exposed to the invasion and passage of the Barbarians, still
continued, after a calamitous period of ten centuries, to supply new
materials for rapine and destruction. Could it even be supposed, that
a large tract of country had been left without cultivation and without
inhabitants, the consequences might not have been so fatal to the
inferior productions of animated nature. The useful and feeble animals,
which are nourished by the hand of man, might suffer and perish, if
they were deprived of his protection; but the beasts of the forest,
his enemies or his victims, would multiply in the free and undisturbed
possession of their solitary domain. The various tribes that people the
air, or the waters, are still less connected with the fate of the human
species; and it is highly probable that the fish of the Danube would
have felt more terror and distress, from the approach of a voracious
pike, than from the hostile inroad of a Gothic army.

Chapter XXVI: Progress of The Huns.--Part V.

Whatever may have been the just measure of the calamities of Europe,
there was reason to fear that the same calamities would soon extend
to the peaceful countries of Asia. The sons of the Goths had been
judiciously distributed through the cities of the East; and the arts of
education were employed to polish, and subdue, the native fierceness
of their temper. In the space of about twe