d deserved to live. The emperor conceived,
that it was his interest to increase the number of his subjects; and
that it was his duty to guard the purity of the marriage-bed: but the
means which he employed to accomplish these salutary purposes are of
an ambiguous, and perhaps exceptionable, kind. The pious maids, who
consecrated their virginity to Christ, were restrained from taking the
veil till they had reached their fortieth year. Widows under that age
were compelled to form a second alliance within the term of five years,
by the forfeiture of half their wealth to their nearest relations, or to
the state. Unequal marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment
of confiscation and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt of
adultery, that, if the criminal returned to Italy, he might, by the
express declaration of Majorian, be slain with impunity.

While the emperor Majorian assiduously labored to restore the happiness
and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from his
character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals
and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris, or Garigliano; but the
Imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly Barbarians, who
were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with
slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king's brother-in-law,
was found in the number of the slain. Such vigilance might announce the
character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance, and the most
numerous forces, were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast
of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion had
imposed a nobler and more arduous task on the genius of Majorian. Rome
expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design, which
he formed, of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements, was the
result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could have
infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy; if he could have
revived in the field of Mars, the manly exercises in which he had always
surpassed his equals; he might have marched against Genseric at the
head of a _Roman_ army. Such a reformation of national manners might
be embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those
princes who laboriously sustain a declining monarchy, that, to obtain
some immediate advantage, or to avert some impending danger, they are
forced to countenance, and even to multiply, the