“It must be so. Plato, thou reason’st well: Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself and startles at destruction? ’Tis the divinity that stirs within us; ’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. * * * * * The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age and nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.” But Attila did not mount his funeral pile. The day passed without attack upon Attila’s formidable position. King Theodoric lay dead upon the plain and his son Prince Thorismund, who had distinguished himself in the battle, was victoriously proclaimed King of the Visigoths. Ætius, Valentinian’s able general, held in leash both the Romans and the Visigoths even while Attila slowly broke up camp and withdrew in long lines leading northward. EFFECT. The effect was that of victory for the allies. Rome was saved from a fresh infusion of barbarism whilst her Teutonic element was still semi-barbarous. The German characteristics--love of liberty, independence, and reverential regard for women--thus dominated the Christian civilization which now began to flourish vigorously out from the decadence of pagan Rome. If, as Byron says, “Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,” then also it may be said that Lucan laughed Rome’s gods and goddesses away. The laugh is the most insidiously potent of all destructive forces when the laugher is loved and the times are attuned to hear. Not satire, not personal bitterness, not even the withering invectives of a Juvenal are as sweepingly effective as the quills of ridicule, the inescapable miasma of the laugh. Once let the grin distort the frown of Zeus and majesty trembles, awe smiles, reverence dies. And so the pagan deities were dead; their temples empty and meaningless; and thundering Jove and jealous Juno and murderous Mars and all the other deifications of the all too human heart of man were impotently silent under the spell of the solemn central figure of the new religion--Christ on the Cross.