But about 450 A. D. hordes, innumerable hordes, _velut unda supervenit undam_ (even as wave upon wave) of hideously ugly, lithe, little, wiry, imp-like men poured into Europe from the Asiatic lands north of the Black Sea. By their numbers, their lightning-like rapidity, their uncanny appearance, and their brute ferocity, they quickly swept the countries before them, put to flight the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other tribes dwelling along the course of the Danube, and finally under their terrible leader Atzel (Attila), Scourge of God, they confronted the civilized and semi-civilized world in arms on the plain of Chalons. BATTLE. From early dawn even until darkness frowned over the field the blood-feast flowed: and Death was satiated. Attila withdrew to his camp. He left an effective guard around his wagons and outposts and made every thing ready for a prolonged and obstinate resistance to the attack anticipated at early dawn. Nevertheless he built for himself a massive funeral pile, placed upon it his most valued treasures and his favorite wives, and was fully prepared and resolute to apply the torch, ascend the pyre, and so perish in the flames--should defeat fall to his fortune on the following day. Morning dawned. The awful work of death on the preceding day appalled both armies; miles upon miles of outstretched plain lay covered with carnage; the all-night-writhing mounds of men were ominously still. Sullenly did foe gaze upon foe; but each recoiled from renewal of the slaughter. Still the advantage was with the allies; for Attila, so late the fierce aggressor, was barricaded in his camp--tho’ grimly awaiting attack indeed, and prepared to resist to the end and die like a lion in his den. Did the Romans know of that funeral pile? They may not, indeed, have known the peculiar manner in which Attila would seek death, but they knew that he would die by his own hand--if the worst came. Cato had done so and Varus and Brutus and Cassius and Hannibal and Anthony and Cleopatra--_ad infinitum_. Addison, in his tragedy _Cato_, has graphically portrayed the conflicting thoughts and emotions in the mind of a man who feels that life cannot longer be borne and yet shrinks back from the horror and the dread unknown. Cato had lost the battle of Utica. He had been true to Pompey, he had fought the last battle for the cause of Pompey--and lost. And Cæsar was indeed god of this world, and the morrow held no place on all this so vast earth for Cato; this lost-battle night must end it all. He read Plato’s discourse on the immortality of the soul, and in the lines of Addison, thus soliloquized: