with the Goths, was defeated in Thrace, and found a tomb on the spot of his death. Gratian, betrayed by his own army, and not received by the cities which he approached, suffered the mockery of enemies: and thy walls, O Lyons, bear the impression of the blood-stained hand. The young Valentinian, scarcely beyond boyhood, after flight, after banishment, after recovering the empire with great blood-shedding, was slain near the city, guilty of his brother’s death: and his lifeless body suffered the ignominy of the halter. Then there was Procopius, and Maximus, and Eugenius, who, when they were in power, struck their opponents with terror. All stood captives before their conquerors: and suffered that utmost misery of those once powerful: to be reduced to slavery, and then slaughtered. “Some one may say, this is the lot of kings, and lightnings strike high summits. Pass to private ranks, and only within the last two years. Let us take but the different ends of three lately Consuls. Abundantius is in poverty and exile at Pityuns. The head of Ruffinus was carried on a pike to Constantinople; his right hand was cut off, and, to mark his insatiable greed, taken begging from door to door. Timavius, hurled suddenly from the loftiest ranks, thinks it an escape to live nameless at Assa. It is not the calamities of the miserable which I relate, but the frailty of man’s condition. It strikes with horror to follow out the ruins of our times. It is more than twenty years since Roman blood is shed daily between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. In Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, and all the Pannonias, Goth and Sarmatian, Quade, Alan, and Hun, Vandals and Marcomans, waste, drag away, and plunder. How many matrons, how many consecrated virgins, how many free and noble persons, have fallen a prey to these brutes! Bishops captured; priests and the various ranks of clergy slain; churches ruined; horses stabled at Christ’s altars; relics of martyrs dug up. Mourning and death in every shape on all sides. The Roman world falls in pieces, but our stiff neck is not bent. What spirit, think you, have Corinthians, Athenians, Lacedæmonians, Arcadians, and all Greece, in the gripe of barbarians? I have named few cities which were not formerly strong powers. The East seemed free from these scourges: bad tidings only terrified it. When lo! last year, from the farthest heights of Caucasus, wolves, not of Arabia, but of the North, were let loose upon us. They overran at once great provinces. How many monasteries were captured! How many rivers changed into human blood! Antioch was besieged, and the cities which the Halys, Cydnus, Orontes, Euphrates traverse. Crowds of captives carried away. Arabia, Phœnicia, Palestine, Egypt, trembling with fright. Had I a hundred tongues and mouths, and a voice of iron, I could not enumerate all the tortures suffered. I did not propose