accents of almost universal despair.

In such a crisis a great man was imperatively needed, and a great man
arose. The dismayed emperor cast his eyes over the whole extent of his
dominions to find a deliverer. And he found the needed hero living
quietly and in modest retirement on a farm in Spain. This man was
Theodosius the Great, a young man then,--as modest as David amid the
pastures, as unambitious as Cincinnatus at the plough. "The vulgar,"
says Gibbon, "gazed with admiration on the manly beauty of his face and
the graceful majesty of his person, while in the qualities of his mind
and heart intelligent observers perceived the blended excellences of
Trajan and Constantine." As prudent as Fabius, as persevering as Alfred,
as comprehensive as Charlemagne, as full of resources as Frederic II.,
no more fitting person could be found to wield the sceptre of Trajan his
ancestor. No greater man than he did the Empire then contain, and
Gratian was wise and fortunate in associating with himself so
illustrious a man in the imperial dignity.

If Theodosius was unassuming, he was not obscure and unimportant. His
father had been a successful general in Britain and Africa, and he
himself had been instructed by his father in the art of war, and had
served under him with distinction. As Duke of Maesia he had vanquished
an army of Sarmatians, saved the province, deserved the love of his
soldiers, and provoked the envy of the court. But his father having
incurred the jealousy of Gratian and been unjustly executed, he was
allowed to retire to his patrimonial estates near Valladolid, where he
gave himself up to rural enjoyments and ennobling studies. He was not
long permitted to remain in this retirement; for the public dangers
demanded the service of the ablest general in the Empire, and there was
no one so illustrious as he. And how lofty must have been his character,
if Gratian dared to associate with himself in the government of the
Empire a man whose father he had unjustly executed! He was thirty-three
when he was invested with imperial purple and intrusted with the conduct
of the Gothic war.

The Goths, who under Fritigern had defeated the Roman army before the
walls of Adrianople, were Germanic barbarians who lived between the
Rhine and the Vistula in those forests which now form the empire of
Germany. They belonged to a family of nations which had the same natural
characteristics,--love of independence, passion for war, venera