to learn, even from those whom they despised; a brain equal
to that of the Roman in practical power, and not too far behind that of
the Eastern in imaginative and speculative acuteness.

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 frontier, after long southward
wanderings from the Swedish mountains, soon to be dispossessed again by
the advancing Huns, and, crossing the Alps, to give their name for ever
to the plains of Lombardy. A few more tumultuous years, and the Franks
would find themselves lords of the Lower Rhineland; and before the hairs
of Hypatia's scholars ha