ssessions of the Huns.]

[Footnote 20: Septuaginta civitates (says Prosper-Tyro) depredatione
vastatoe. The language of Count Marcellinus is still more forcible.
Pene totam Europam, invasis excisisque civitatibus atque castellis,
conrasit.]

[Footnote 21: Tillemont (Hist des Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 106, 107) has
paid great attention to this memorable earthquake; which was felt as far
from Constantinople as Antioch and Alexandria, and is celebrated by
all the ecclesiastical writers. In the hands of a popular preacher, an
earthquake is an engine of admirable effect.]

In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the
Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and
destructive spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of
national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial
interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained
by a moderate use of conquest; and a just apprehension, lest the
desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on
our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown
in the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without
injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars, before their primitive
manners were changed by religion and luxury; and the evidence of
Oriental history may reflect some light on the short and imperfect
annals of Rome. After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces
of China, it was seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory
and passion, but in calm deliberate council, to exterminate all the
inhabitants of that populous country, that the vacant land might be
converted to the pasture of cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin,
[22] who insinuated some principles of rational policy into the mind of
Zingis, diverted him from the execution of this horrid design. But in
the cities of Asia, which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of
the rights of war was exercised with a regular form of discipline, which
may, with equal reason, though not with equal authority, be imputed
to the victorious Huns. The inhabitants, who had submitted to their
discretion, were ordered to evacuate their houses, and to assemble
in some plain adjacent to the city; where a division was made of the
vanquished into three parts. The first class consisted of the soldiers
of the garrison, and of the young men capable of bearing arms; and their
fate was instantly decided