Catalaunian plains, an endless
succession of Jenghiz Khans and Tamerlanes would probably have swept
over the desolated plains of Europe; Paris and Florence would have been
even as Khiva and Bokhara, and the island of Britain would not have yet
attained to the degree of civilisation reached by the peninsula of
Corea.

In the year after the fruitless invasion of Gaul, Attila crossed the
Julian Alps and entered Italy, intending (452) doubtless to rival the
fame of Alaric by his capture of Rome, an operation which would have
been attended with infinitely greater ruin to

"the seven-hilled city's pride",

than any which she had sustained at the hands of the Visigothic leader.
But the Huns, unskilful in siege work, were long detained before the
walls of Aquileia, that great and flourishing frontier city, hitherto
deemed impregnable, which gathered in the wealth of the Venetian
province, and guarded the north-eastern approaches to Italy. At length
by a sudden assault they made themselves masters of the city, which they
destroyed with utter destruction, putting all the inhabitants to the
sword, and then wrapping in fire and smoke the stately palaces, the
wharves, the mint, the forum, the theatres of the fourth city of Italy.
The terror of this brutal destruction took from the other cities of
Venetia all heart for resistance to the terrible invader. From
Concordia, Altino, Padua, crowds of trembling fugitives walked, waded,
or sailed with their hastily gathered and most precious possessions to
the islands, surrounded by shallow lagoons, which fringed the Adriatic
coast, near the mouths of the Brenta and Adige. There at Torcello,
Burano, Rialto, Malamocco, and their sister islets, they laid the humble
foundations of that which was one day to be the gorgeous and
wide-ruling Republic of Venice.

Attila meanwhile marched on through the valley of the Po ravaging and
plundering, but a little slackening in the work of mere destruction, as
the remembrance of the stubborn defence of Aquileia faded from his
memory. Entering Milan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture
representing the Emperors of the Romans sitting on golden thrones, and
the Scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a
Milanese painter, and bade the trembling artist represent him, Attila,
sitting on the throne, and the two Roman Emperors staggering under sacks
full of gold coin, which they bore upon their shoulders, and pouring out
their precious