. Some
truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion that the wrath
of Heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage, and that the proud
Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and heroes,
was leveled in the dust by the stroke of lightning....

It was not easy to compute the multitudes who, from an honorable station
and a prosperous future, were suddenly reduced to the miserable
condition of captives and exiles.... The nations who invaded the Roman
empire had driven before them into Italy whole troops of hungry and
affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than of famine.
The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the inhabitants to the most
lonely, the most secure, the most distant places of refuge.... The
Italian fugitives were dispersed through the provinces, along the coast
of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the
village of Bethlem, the solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female
converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex and every
age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their past
fortune. This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire
with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin
disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to
exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who
applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of Oriental prophecy, were
sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the capital and the
dissolution of the globe.

SILK

I need not explain that _silk_ is originally spun from the bowels of a
caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb from whence a worm
emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the
silkworms who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were
confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash were common
in the forests both of Asia and Europe: but as their education is more
difficult, and their produce more uncertain, they were generally
neglected, except in the little island of Ceos, near the coast of
Attica. A thin gauze was procured from their webs, and this Cean
manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired
both in the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the
garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer
who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the tr