Phoenician rule, though they are quite unable to give us any
reliable details of the long ages in which this people held sovereignty
here.

Within a few years some remains were unearthed which were attributed to
the Goths, but of all the people who have been mentioned, they probably
left fewer evidences of their presence in Malta than did any other race.
After becoming masters of Italy and Sicily, they came hither about
A. D. 506, and held possession of the group for nearly forty
years, until they were expelled by the army of Justinian under
Belisarius.

The most romantic period of the ever-changing history of this group of
islands, subjected first and last to the control of so many different
nationalities, is undoubtedly that embraced in the two centuries and a
half of the eventful sovereignty of the Knights of St. John,--Knights
Hospitallers, as they were very properly called at first, the most
famous order of mediaeval chivalry, whose name is more familiar to us as
Knights of Malta. The first convent of the founders at Jerusalem was
dedicated to St. John; hence the original name of the order. It was the
earliest systematized charity of the sort concerning which we have any
authentic record. If the true history of this organization could be
written, it would overshadow the most vivid romance. It began in
Palestine during the darkness of the tenth century, when the Saracens
were masters of Jerusalem, and it extends to the verge of the
eighteenth. It is but the outline of important events, which live
through the ages to reach us. The individual is sunk in the mass, and
yet real history is but enlarged biography. The truth of this is shown
in the life of La Vallette, as handed down through three centuries. His
biography gives us a better history of the order of which he was Grand
Master than do writers who attempt it by treating the brotherhood as a
whole. Had the moral character of the Knights of St. John been equal to
their dauntless courage, the order would have formed a worthy example
for all time; but their record shows them and their deeds to have been
of mingled good and evil, the latter quality oftenest predominating. In
the period when their material prosperity was at its height, they were
equally celebrated for wealth, pomp, and vice. While they were boastful
and claimed to be invincible, unlike most braggarts, they were
undeniably brave. Nor was this by any means the only anomaly in the
character of this sin