And their strength was felt at once. Their vanguard, confined with
difficulty for three centuries beyond the Eastern Alps, at the
expense of sanguinary wars, had been adopted wherever it was
practicable, into the service of the Empire; and the heart's core of
the Roman legion was composed of Gothic officers and soldiers. But
now the main body had arrived. Tribe after tribe was crowding down
to the Alps, and trampling upon each other on the frontiers of the
Empire. The Huns, singly their inferiors, pressed them from behind
with the irresistible weight of numbers; Italy, with her rich cities
and fertile lowlands, beckoned them on to plunder; as auxiliaries,
they had learned their own strength and Roman weakness; a _casus
belli_ was soon found. How iniquitous was the conduct of the sons
of Theodosius, in refusing the usual bounty, by which the Goths were
bribed not to attack the Empire!--The whole pent-up deluge burst
over the plains of Italy, and the Western Empire became from that
day forth a dying idiot, while the new invaders divided Europe among
themselves. The fifteen years before the time of this tale had
decided the fate of Greece; the last four that of Rome itself. The
countless treasures which five centuries of rapine had accumulated
round the Capitol had become the prey of men clothed in sheepskins
and horse-hide; and the sister of an emperor had found her beauty,
virtue, and pride of race worthily matched by those of the hard-
handed Northern hero who led her away from Italy as his captive and
his bride, to found new kingdoms in South France and Spain, and to
drive the newly-arrived Vandals across the Straits of Gibraltar into
the then blooming coast-land of Northern Africa. Everywhere the
mangled limbs of the Old World were seething in the Medea's caldron,
to come forth whole, and young, and strong. The Longbeards, noblest
of their race, had found a temporary resting-place upon the Austrian