ng empire reaches St. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem,
and in an eloquent letter he deplores the disaster of Christendom: "Who
could ever have believed the day would come when Rome should see war at
her very gates, and fight, not for glory but for safety? Fight, say I?
Nay, redeem her life with treasure."[31]

Treasure did not suffice; the town was taken and retaken. Alaric sacked
the capital in 410, and Genseric in 455. During several centuries all
who emerge from this human tide, and are able to rule the tempest, are
either barbarians or crowned peasants. In the fifth and sixth centuries
a Frank reigns at Paris, Clovis to wit; an Ostrogoth at Ravenna,
Theodoric; a peasant at Byzantium, Justinian; Attila's conqueror,
Aetius, is a barbarian; Stilicho is a Vandal in the service of the
Empire. A Frank kingdom has grown up in the heart of Gaul; a Visigoth
kingdom has Toulouse for its capital; Genseric and his Vandals are
settled in Carthage; the Lombards, in the sixth century, cross the
mountains, establish themselves in ancient Cisalpine Gaul, and drive
away the inhabitants towards the lagoons where Venice is to rise. The
isle of Britain has likewise ceased to be Roman, and Germanic kingdoms
have been founded there.

Mounted on their ships, sixty to eighty feet long, by ten or fifteen
broad, of which a specimen can be seen at the museum of Kiel,[32] the
dwellers on the shores of the Baltic and North Sea had at first
organised plundering expeditions against the great island. They came
periodically and laid waste the coasts; and on account of them the
inhabitants gave to this part of the land the name _Littus Saxonicum_.
Each time the pirates met with less resistance, and found the country
more disorganised. In the course of the fifth century they saw they had
no need to return annually to their morasses, and that they could
without trouble remain within reach of plunder. They settled first in
the islands, then on the coasts, and by degrees in the interior. Among
them were Goths or Jutes of Denmark (Jutland), Frisians, Franks, Angles
from Schleswig, and Saxons from the vast lands between the Elbe and
Rhine.

These last two, especially, came in great numbers, occupied wide
territories, and founded lasting kingdoms. The Angles, whose name was to
remain affixed to the whole nation, occupied Northumberland, a part of
the centre, and the north-east coast, from Scotland to the present
county of Essex; the Saxons settled furth