"The most strenuous diligence was exerted, that not a single barbarian of those, who were reserved to subvert the foundation of Rome, should be left on the opposite shore," (Gibbon, chap. 26.) Their valour and fidelity might have rewarded a prudent and liberal policy with a valuable alliance. The feeble sentiment of national gratitude would have soon expired in the enjoyment of the favour that deserved it, but the durable passion of vindictive hatred would have conspired with their obvious interest to aid the Roman legions in defending the frontier province into which they were introduced, against the incursions of the savages from whose sanguinary cruelty they had escaped. They speedily experienced that, for their present security, they were indebted to no sentiment of humanity, and were compelled by their deliverers to transfer to them the deadly enmity they would have cherished against the Huns.

The Gothic fugitives had no sooner spread their immense camp over the hills and plains of Lower Mosia, the modern Bulgaria, and prepared to devote themselves to the occupations of rural industry, than, with an infatuation, as unaccountable to the sceptic, as intelligible to the Christian, the Roman government lost no time in worrying them into the most destructive hostility that had, ever since the foundation of the city, assailed the Roman people.

I must refer my reader to the 26th chapter of Gibbon's History, for a detailed account of the accumulated acts of barbarity and insult, by which the

fugitives were goaded into that desperate insurrection which, by braving the power and exposing the weakness of their unfeeling oppressors, led the way

to the successive invasions of the various tribes of northern barbarians, who, after repeatedly ravaging Rome, Italy, and the provinces, with fire and sword, finally subjugated and partitioned among them the Latin empire.*

That great catastrophe is revealed in the symbols of the second seal.

5. "And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second animal say, Come and see.

6. "And there went out another horse that was red; and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth; and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.”

The rider in this seal represents the Goths, so lately under the oppressive domination of the Roman government, but now elevated into power over it— the colour of the horse is uppoç, fiery red-the property of fire, to reduce the most solid substances into smoke and ashes, well describes the utter destruction

* I have not observed, in the work of any writer to which I have had access, any indication of suspicion that the imperial government was induced to import the Goths into the Roman territory, only by the hope of being able to destroy by famine or massacre-all, at least, of the male adults-when, surrounded by the Roman legions, the intended victims of its perfidy should be cut off from every possibility, either of succour or of retreat. Yet all the recorded facts do not easily consist with any supposition less horrible, and the character of Valens and of his ministers invites the imputation of the most atrocious motive.

with which the barbarians consumed, not only the cities and provinces, but the institutions, literature, and language of the Latin empire:-that the horseman should "take peace from the earth," and the great sword" that was given to him, are symbols, of which the signification is too obvious to need explanation. The animal that summons the prophet to the opening of this seal is the bull, a graminivorous, and generally a harmless beast; but, liable to sudden impulses of brutal rage, he may be provoked to exercise his great strength with ungovernable ferocity.

These qualities render him an appropriate type of a barbarian people, at once pastoral, powerful, and warlike.* When baited and worried into fierce excitement, he assails, indiscriminately, his tormentors and every object, living or inanimate, that he meets or can overtake. But not being a carnivorous animal, the victims of his fury cannot gratify any of his appetites, except that of blind destruction.

That such was the remarkable character of the Gothic devastations of the Roman territories has not escaped the sagacity of Gibbon, who observes, in the chapter already cited, "the dominion of the barbarians was exercised only for the purposes of rapine

*

"The tremendous Gothic trumpet," formed of the large horn of the Uri, or wild bull, announced a pastoral people, unacquainted with metallic instruments of sound. It poured to a great distance, the fearful notes of "its harsh and mournful music:"

"Ne'er were prophetic sounds so full of woe."

See Gibbon, ch. xxvi. and note 76.

and destruction. As they had been deprived, by the ministers of the empire, of the common benefits of nature, and the fair intercourse of social life, they retaliated the injustice on the subjects of the empire; and the crimes of Lupicinus* were expiated by the ruin of the peaceful husbandmen of Thrace, the conflagration of their villages, and the massacre or captivity of their innocent families." And in narrating their ravages on a subsequent occasion, the historian relates in the same chapter: "An army of conquerors was broken into many disorderly bands of robbers; and their blind and irregular fury was not less pernicious to themselves than to their enemies. Their mischievous disposition was shown in the destruction of every object which they wanted strength to remove, or taste to enjoy; and they often consumed, with improvident rage, the harvest or the granaries which soon after became necessary for their own subsistence."

THE THIRD SEAL.

OVER the ruins of the Latin empire, distributed among the several tribes of its barbarian conquerors, slowly and in stealthy silence, but with steady progression, arose a power unparallelled in the annals of mankind. It has now, with various measure of extent, endured above twelve hundred years, and will be ever memorable in the history of the christian church.

The force which had hitherto ruled the kingdoms

*Chief minister of Valens.

of the world was always visible in the hand of its possessor. The sword or sceptre, to which the several nations of the earth had submitted, perpetually glittered in their eyes, and might be at any moment severely felt. To an authority, of which the instruments were thus perceptible to the senses, succeeded in Europe a dominion of the imagination. Priestcraft gradually subjugated and governed the provinces of the subverted empire. Its domination became, to the well-being of man, the most baleful that ever existed. The despotism of the Roman church grew into the most merciless tyranny that ever oppressed and degraded our nature. Paganism had, for many ages, encouraged and rewarded the beneficent exertions of reason, and the inventors of useful arts were gratefully reverenced in tutelary idols of the communities which they had blessed with the fruits of their mental labours. But so succesfully did popery direct against the intellect of man all her demoniacal energies, that the narrowest compass and lowest point to which his rational faculties can be contracted and depressed are to be found when she was in her zenith—the period of five centuries, including the tenth and fourteenth-wherein the human mind, dark and stagnant, as if under the incubation of a nightmare, was permitted to engender, even in the country of Cicero, Cæsar, Lucretius, Pliny, and Tacitus, only the horrible progeny (incestuous brood!) of monkery and diabolism.* If from that degrada

* With some splendid, and very rare exceptions, the popular literature (if the writings of the dark ages deserved the name)