Irritated rather than humbled, as some beast of prey, by this mishap, he turned to Italy. Crossing the Alps, he laid siege to Aquileia, at that time one of the richest, most populous, and strongest of the cities on the Hadriatic coast. He took it, sacked it, and so utterly destroyed it, that the succeeding generation could scarcely trace its ruins. It is, we know, no slight work, in toil and expense, even with all the appliances of modern science, to raze a single fortress; yet the energy of these wild warriors made sport of walled cities. He turned back, and passed along through Lombardy; and, as he moved, he set fire to Padua and other cities; he plundered Vincenza, Verona, and Bergamo; and sold to the citizens of Milan and Pavia their lives and buildings at the price of the surrender of their property. There were a number of minute islands in the shallows of the extremity of the Hadriatic; and thither the trembling inhabitants of the coast fled for refuge. Fish was for a time their sole food, and salt, extracted from the sea, their sole possession. Such was the origin of the city and the republic of Venice. 4. It does not enter into my subject to tell you how this ferocious conqueror was stayed in the course of blood and fire which was carrying him towards Rome, by the great St. Leo, the Pope of the day, who undertook an embassy to his camp. It was not the first embassy which the Romans had sent to him, and their former negotiations had been associated with circumstances which could not favourably dispose the Hun to new overtures. It is melancholy to be obliged to confess that, on that occasion, the contrast between barbarism and civilization had been to the advantage of the former. The Romans, who came to Attila to treat upon the terms of an accommodation, after various difficulties and some insults, had found themselves at length in the Hunnish capital, in Hungary, the sole city of an empire which extended for some thousand miles. In the number of these ambassadors were some who were conducting an intrigue with Attila's own people for his assassination, and who actually had with them the imperial gold which was to be the price of the crime. Attila was aware of the conspiracy, and showed his knowledge of it; but, from respect for the law of nations and of hospitality, he spared the guilty instruments or authors. Sad as it is to have to record such practices of an Imperial Court professedly Christian, still, it is not unwelcome, for the honour of human nature, to discover in consequence of them those vestiges of moral rectitude which the degradation of ages had not obliterated from the Tartar character. It is well known that when Homer, 1,500 years before, speaks of these barbarians, he calls them, on the one hand, "drinkers of mare's milk;" on the other, "the most just of men." Truth, honesty, justice, hospitality, according to their view of things, are the historical