t of its material grandeur,
and now it was laid low and desolate. The end of all things seemed to be
at hand; and the only consolation of the great churchmen of the age was
the belief in the second coming of our Lord.

The sack of Rome by Alaric, A.D. 410, was followed in less than half a
century by a second capture and a second spoliation at the hands of the
Vandals, with Genseric at their head,--a tribe of barbarians of kindred
Germanic race, but fiercer instincts and more hideous peculiarities.
This time, the inhabitants of Rome (for Alaric had not destroyed
it,--only robbed it) put on no airs of indifference or defiance. They
knew their weakness. They begged for mercy.

The last hope of the city was her Christian bishop; and the great Leo,
who was to Rome what Augustine had been to Carthage when that capital
also fell into the hands of Vandals, hastened to the barbarian's camp.
The only concession he could get was that the lives of the people should
be spared,--a promise only partially kept. The second pillage lasted
fourteen days and nights. The Vandals transferred to their ships all
that the Goths had left, even to the trophies of the churches and
ancient temples; the statues which ornamented the capital, the holy
vessels of the Jewish temple which Titus had brought from Jerusalem,
imperial sideboards of massive silver, the jewels of senatorial
families, with their wives and daughters,--all were carried away to
Carthage, the seat of the new Empire of the Vandals, A.D. 455, then once
more a flourishing city. The haughty capital met the fate which she had
inflicted on her rival in the days of Cato the censor, but fell still
more ingloriously, and never would have recovered from this second fall
had not her immortal bishop, rising with the greatness of the crisis,
laid the foundation of a new power,--that spiritual domination which
controlled the Gothic nations for more than a thousand years.

With the fall of Rome,--yet too great a city to be wholly despoiled or
ruined, and which has remained even to this day the centre of what is
most interesting in the world,--I should close this Lecture; but I must
glance rapidly over the whole Empire, and show its condition when the
imperial capital was spoiled, humiliated, and deserted.

The Suevi, Alans, and Vandals invaded Spain, and erected their barbaric
monarchies. The Goths were established in the south of Gaul, while the
north was occupied by the Franks and Burgundian