us comfort in vain; not even a wandering Goth was to be seen
near their empty halls. For, with such a prospect before them as the
subjugation of Rome, the army had caught the infection of its leader's
enthusiasm for his exalted task, and willingly obeyed his commands for
suspending the pillage of the suburbs, disdaining the comparatively
worthless treasures around them, attainable at any time, when they felt
that the rich coffers of Rome herself were now fast opening to their
eager hands. Voiceless and noiseless, unpeopled and unravaged, lay the
far-famed suburbs of the greatest city of the universe, sunk alike in
the night of Nature, the night of Fortune, and the night of Glory!

Saddening and impressive as was the prospect thus presented to the eyes
of the young Goth, it failed to weaken the powerful influence that his
evening's meditations yet held over his mind. As, during the hours
that were passed, the image of the forsaken girl had dissipated the
remembrance of the duties he had performed, and opposed the
contemplation of the commands he was yet to fulfil, so it now denied to
his faculties any impressions from the lonely scene, beheld, yet
unnoticed, which spread around him. Still, as he passed through the
gloomy streets, his vain regrets and self-accusations, his natural
predilections and acquired attachments, ruled over him and contended
within him, as sternly and as unceasingly as in the first moments when
they had arisen with the evening, during his sojourn in the terrace of
the deserted house.

He had now arrived at the extremest boundary of the buildings in the
suburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shining
fields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him were
some vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house,
the outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark and
cheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanical
attention of a man more occupied in thought than
observation,--gradually advancing towards it in the moody abstraction
of his reflections, until he unconsciously paused before the low range
of irregular steps which led to its entrance door.

Startled from its meditations by his sudden propinquity to the object
that he had unwittingly approached, he now, for the first time,
examined the lonely abode before him with real attention.

There was nothing remarkable about the house, save the extreme
desolaten