d widening the bed that was incumbered with ruins, the vigilance of
his successors was exercised by similar dangers and designs. The project
of diverting into new channels the Tiber itself, or some of the
dependent streams, was long opposed by superstition and local interests;
nor did the use compensate the toil and costs of the tardy and imperfect
execution. The servitude of rivers is the noblest and most important
victory which man has obtained over the licentiousness of nature; and if
such were the ravages of the Tiber under a firm and active government,
what could oppose, or who can enumerate, the injuries of the city after
the fall of the Western Empire? A remedy was at length produced by the
evil itself: the accumulation of rubbish and the earth that has been
washed down from the hills is supposed to have elevated the plain of
Rome fourteen or fifteen feet perhaps above the ancient level: and the
modern city is less accessible to the attacks of the river.

II. The crowd of writers of every nation who impute the destruction of
the Roman monuments to the Goths and the Christians, have neglected to
inquire how far they were animated by a hostile principle, and how far
they possessed the means and the leisure to satiate their enmity. In the
preceding volumes of this history I have described the triumph of
barbarism and religion; and I can only resume in a few words their real
or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome. Our fancy may
create or adopt a pleasing romance: that the Goths and Vandals sallied
from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge the flight of Odin, to break the
chains and to chastise the oppressors of mankind; that they wished to
burn the records of classic literature, and to found their national
architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders.
But in simple truth, the Northern conquerors were neither sufficiently
savage nor sufficiently refined to entertain such aspiring ideas of
destruction and revenge. The shepherds of Scythia and Germany had been
educated in the armies of the Empire, whose discipline they acquired and
whose weakness they invaded; with the familiar use of the Latin tongue,
they had learned to reverence the name and titles of Rome; and though
incapable of emulating, they were more inclined to admire than to
abolish the arts and studies of a brighter period. In the transient
possession of a rich and unresisting capital, the soldiers of Alaric and
Genseric were