more security
of conscience, the famous missorium, or great dish for the service of
the table, of massy gold, of the weight of five hundred pounds, and of
far superior value, from the precious stones, the exquisite workmanship,
and the tradition, that it had been presented by Aetius, the patrician,
to Torismond, king of the Goths. One of the successors of Torismond
purchased the aid of the French monarch by the promise of this
magnificent gift. When he was seated on the throne of Spain, he
delivered it with reluctance to the ambassadors of Dagobert; despoiled
them on the road; stipulated, after a long negotiation, the inadequate
ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold; and preserved the
missorium, as the pride of the Gothic treasury. [140] When that
treasury, after the conquest of Spain, was plundered by the Arabs, they
admired, and they have celebrated, another object still more remarkable;
a table of considerable size, of one single piece of solid emerald,
[141] encircled with three rows of fine pearls, supported by three
hundred and sixty-five feet of gems and massy gold, and estimated at the
price of five hundred thousand pieces of gold. [142] Some portion of
the Gothic treasures might be the gift of friendship, or the tribute
of obedience; but the far greater part had been the fruits of war and
rapine, the spoils of the empire, and perhaps of Rome.

[Footnote 139: See in the great collection of the Historians of France
by Dom Bouquet, tom. ii. Greg. Turonens. l. iii. c. 10, p. 191. Gesta
Regum Francorum, c. 23, p. 557. The anonymous writer, with an ignorance
worthy of his times, supposes that these instruments of Christian
worship had belonged to the temple of Solomon. If he has any meaning it
must be, that they were found in the sack of Rome.]

[Footnote 140: Consult the following original testimonies in the
Historians of France, tom. ii. Fredegarii Scholastici Chron. c. 73, p.
441. Fredegar. Fragment. iii. p. 463. Gesta Regis Dagobert, c. 29, p.
587. The accession of Sisenand to the throne of Spain happened A.D.
631. The 200,000 pieces of gold were appropriated by Dagobert to the
foundation of the church of St. Denys.]

[Footnote 141: The president Goguet (Origine des Loix, &c., tom. ii. p.
239) is of opinion, that the stupendous pieces of emerald, the
statues and columns which antiquity has placed in Egypt, at Gades,
at Constantinople, were in reality artificial compositions of colored
glass. The famou