stimony to the awe
with which the memory of Attila was regarded by the bold warriors who
composed and delighted in them.

Attila's exploits, and the wonders of his unearthly steed and magic
sword, repeatedly occur in the sagas of Norway and Iceland; and the
celebrated _Nibelungenlied_, the most ancient of Germanic poetry, is
full of them. There Etsel, or Attila, is described as the wearer of
twelve mighty crowns, and as promising to his bride the lands of thirty
kings whom his irresistible sword had subdued. He is, in fact, the hero
of the latter part of this remarkable poem; and it is at his capital
city, Etselenburg, which evidently corresponds to the modern Buda, that
much of its action takes place.

When we turn from the legendary to the historic Attila, we see clearly
that he was not one of the vulgar herd of barbaric conquerors.
Consummate military skill may be traced in his campaigns; and he relied
far less on the brute force of armies for the aggrandizement of his
empire than on the unbounded influence over the affections of friends
and the fears of foes which his genius enabled him to acquire. Austerely
sober in his private life--severely just on the judgment
seat--conspicuous among a nation of warriors for hardihood, strength,
and skill in every martial exercise--grave and deliberate in counsel,
but rapid and remorseless in execution, he gave safety and security to
all who were under his dominion, while he waged a warfare of
extermination against all who opposed or sought to escape from it. He
watched the national passions, the prejudices, the creeds, and the
superstitions of the varied nations over which he ruled and of those
which he sought to reduce beneath his sway: all these feelings he had
the skill to turn to his own account. His own warriors believed him to
be the inspired favorite of their deities, and followed him with fanatic
zeal; his enemies looked on him as the preappointed minister of heaven's
wrath against themselves; and though they believed not in his creed,
their own made them tremble before him.

In one of his early campaigns he appeared before his troops with an
ancient iron sword in his grasp, which he told them was the god of war
whom their ancestors had worshipped. It is certain that the nomadic
tribes of Northern Asia, whom Herodotus described under the name of
Scythians, from the earliest times worshipped as their god a bare sword.
That sword-god was supposed, in Attila's time, to