ghteenth book of the great, but unfinished, history
of Guicciardini. But the account which most truly deserves the name of
authentic and original, is a little book, entitled, Il Sacco di Roma,
composed, within less than a month after the assault of the city, by the
brother of the historian Guicciardini, who appears to have been an able
magistrate and a dispassionate writer.]

[Footnote 117: The furious spirit of Luther, the effect of temper and
enthusiasm, has been forcibly attacked, (Bossuet, Hist. des Variations
des Eglises Protestantes, livre i. p. 20-36,) and feebly defended,
(Seckendorf. Comment. de Lutheranismo, especially l. i. No. 78, p. 120,
and l. iii. No. 122, p. 556.)] The retreat of the victorious Goths, who
evacuated Rome on the sixth day, [118] might be the result of prudence;
but it was not surely the effect of fear. [119] At the head of an army
encumbered with rich and weighty spoils, their intrepid leader advanced
along the Appian way into the southern provinces of Italy, destroying
whatever dared to oppose his passage, and contenting himself with the
plunder of the unresisting country. The fate of Capua, the proud and
luxurious metropolis of Campania, and which was respected, even in its
decay, as the eighth city of the empire, [120] is buried in oblivion;
whilst the adjacent town of Nola [121] has been illustrated, on this
occasion, by the sanctity of Paulinus, [122] who was successively a
consul, a monk, and a bishop. At the age of forty, he renounced the
enjoyment of wealth and honor, of society and literature, to embrace
a life of solitude and penance; and the loud applause of the clergy
encouraged him to despise the reproaches of his worldly friends, who
ascribed this desperate act to some disorder of the mind or body. [123]
An early and passionate attachment determined him to fix his humble
dwelling in one of the suburbs of Nola, near the miraculous tomb of St.
Faelix, which the public devotion had already surrounded with five
large and populous churches. The remains of his fortune, and of his
understanding, were dedicated to the service of the glorious martyr;
whose praise, on the day of his festival, Paulinus never failed to
celebrate by a solemn hymn; and in whose name he erected a sixth church,
of superior elegance and beauty, which was decorated with many curious
pictures, from the history of the Old and New Testament. Such assiduous
zeal secured the favor of the saint, [124] or at least of