him for ever from the clemency of the Empire.

Then came the end. He marched on Rome. The Salarian gate was thrown
open at midnight, probably by German slaves within; and then, for
five dreadful days and nights, the wicked city expiated in agony the
sins of centuries.

And so at last the Nibelungen hoard was won.

'And the kings of the earth who had lived delicately with her, and
the merchants of the earth who were made rich by her, bewailed her,
standing afar off for the fear of her torment, and crying, Alas!
alas, that great Babylon! for in one hour is thy judgment come.'

St. John passes in those words from the region of symbol to that of
literal description. A great horror fell upon all nations, when the
news came. Rome taken? Surely the end of all things was at hand.
The wretched fugitives poured into Egypt and Syria--especially to
Jerusalem; perhaps with some superstitious hope that Christ's tomb,
or even Christ himself, might save them.

St. Jerome, as he saw day by day patrician men and women who had
passed their lives in luxury, begging their bread around his
hermitage at Bethlehem, wrote of the fall of Rome as a man astonied.

St. Augustine, at Hippo, could only look on it as the end of all
human power and glory, perhaps of the earth itself. Babylon the
great had fallen, and now Christ was coming in the clouds of heaven
to set up the city of God for ever. In that thought he wrote his De
Civitate Dei. Read it, gentlemen--especially you who are to be