oftened
by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne
repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of
these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their
existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue,
to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities
of, I. _Bulgarians_, II. _Hungarians_, and, III. _Russians_, I
shall content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be
remembered. The conquests of the, IV. Normans, and the monarchy of the,
V. Turks, will naturally terminate in the memorable Crusades to the Holy
Land, and the double fall of the city and empire of Constantine.

I. In his march to Italy, Theodoric the Ostrogoth had trampled on the
arms of the Bulgarians. After this defeat, the name and the nation are
lost during a century and a half; and it may be suspected that the
same or a similar appellation was revived by strange colonies from the
Borysthenes, the Tanais, or the Volga. A king of the ancient Bulgaria
bequeathed to his five sons a last lesson of moderation and concord.
It was received as youth has ever received the counsels of age and
experience: the five princes buried their father; divided his subjects
and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each other; and wandered
in quest of fortune till we find the most adventurous in the heart of
Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna. But the stream
of emigration was directed or impelled towards the capital. The modern
Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with
the name and image which it has retained to the present hour: the new
conquerors successively acquired, by war or treaty, the Roman provinces
of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epirus; the ecclesiastical supremacy
was translated from the native city of Justinian; and, in their
prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida, was honored
with the throne of a king and a patriarch. The unquestionable evidence
of language attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the original
stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly Slavonian, race; and the
kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Walachians,
&c., followed either the standard or the example of the leading tribe.
From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in the state of captives, or subjects,
or allies, or enemies, of the Greek empire, they overspread the land;
and the national a