cids--came into Europe on the neck of some vulgar drunken wife of a
Roman proconsul, to glitter for a few centuries at every gladiator's
butchery in the amphitheatre; then went away with Placidia on a Gothic ox-
waggon, to pass into an Arab seraglio at Seville; and then, perhaps, back
from Sultan to Sultan again to its native India, to figure in the peacock-
throne of the Great Mogul, and be bought at last by some Armenian for a
few rupees from an English soldier, and come hither--and whither next?
When England shall be what Alexandria and Rome are now, that little stone
will be as bright as ever.--An awful symbol, if you will take it so, of
the permanence of God's works and God's laws, amid the wild chance and
change of sinful man.

Then followed for Rome years of peace,--such peace as the wicked make for
themselves--A troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt. Wicked women,
wicked counts (mayors of the palace, one may call them) like Aetius and
Boniface, the real rulers of a nominal Empire.

Puppet Valentinian succeeded his father, puppet Honorius. In his days
appeared another great portent--another comet, sweeping down out of
infinite space, and back into infinite space again.--Attila and his Huns.
They lay in innumerable hordes upon the Danube, until Honoria,
Valentinian's sister, confined in a convent at Constantinople for some
profligacy, sent her ring to Attila. He must be her champion, and
deliver her. He paused a while, like Alaric before him, doubting whether
to dash on Constantinople or Rome, and at last decided for Rome. But he
would try Gaul first; and into Gaul he poured, with all his Tartar
hordes, and with them all the Teuton tribes, who had gathered in his
progress, as an avalanche gathers the snow in its course. At the great
battle of Chalons, in the year 451, he fought it out: Hun, Sclav, Tartar,
and Finn, backed by Teutonic Gepid and Herule, Turkling, East Goth and
Lombard, against Roman and West Goth, Frank and Burgund, and the Bretons
of Armorica. Wicked Aetius shewed himself that day, as always, a general
and a hero--the Marlborough of his time--and conquered. Attila and his
hordes rolled away eastward, and into Italy for Rome.

That is the Hunnenschlacht; 'a battle,' as Jornandes calls it, 'atrox,
multiplex, immane, pertinax.' Antiquity, he says, tells of nothing like
it. No man who had lost that sight could say that he had seen aught
worth seeing.--A fight gigantic, supernatural in vastn