such a state of greatness,
that her previous sufferings were unrecognizable.' We shall see
hereafter how the great Goth's work was all undone; and (to their
everlasting shame) by whom it was undone.

The most interesting records of the time are, without doubt, the letters
of Cassiodorus, the king's secretary and chancellor, which have come down
to us in great numbers. There are letters among them on all questions of
domestic and foreign policy: to the kings of the Varni, kings of the
Herules, kings of the Thuringer (who were still heathens beyond the Black
forest), calling on them all to join him and the Burgundians, and defend
his son-in-law Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, against Clovis and his
Franks. There are letters, too, bearing on the religious feuds of the
Roman population, and on the morals and social state of Rome itself, of
which I shall say nothing in this lecture, having cause to refer to them
hereafter. But if you wish to know the times, you must read Cassiodorus
thoroughly.

In his letters you will remark how most of the so-called Roman names are
Greek. You will remark, too, as a sign of the decadence of taste and
art, that though full of wisdom and practical morality, the letters are
couched in the most wonderful bombast to be met with, even in that age of
infimae Latinitatis. One can only explain their style by supposing that
King Dietrich, having supplied the sense, left it for Cassiodorus to
shape it as he thought best; and when the letter was read over to him,
took for granted (being no scholar) that that was the way in which Roman
Caesars and other cultivated personages ought to talk; admired his
secretary's learning; and probably laughed in his sleeve at the whole
thing, thinking that ten words of honest German would have said all that
he meant. As for understanding these flights of rhetoric, it is
impossible that Dietrich could have done so: perhaps not even Cassiodorus
himself. Take as one example, such a letter as this.--After a lofty
moral maxim, which I leave for you to construe--'In partem pietatis
recidit mitigata districtio; et sub beneficio praestat, qui poenam
debitam moderatione considerata palpaverit,'--Jovinus the curial is
informed, after the most complex method, that having first quarrelled
with a fellow-curial, and then proceeded to kill him, he is banished for
life to the isle of Volcano, among the Liparis. As a curial is a
gentleman and a government magistrate, the