t the time when this island first came to be
interested in its affairs.

The Northern nations who had overran the Roman Empire were at first
rather actuated by avarice than ambition, and were more intent upon
plunder than conquest; they were carried beyond their original purposes,
when they began, to form regular governments, for which they had been
prepared by no just ideas of legislation. For a long time, therefore,
there was little of order in their affairs or foresight in their
designs. The Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Vandals, the Suevi,
after they had prevailed over the Roman Empire, by turns prevailed over
each other in continual wars, which were carried on upon no principles
of a determinate policy, entered into upon motives of brutality and
caprice, and ended as fortune and rude violence chanced to prevail.
Tumult, anarchy, confusion, overspread the face of Europe; and an
obscurity rests upon the transactions of that time which suffers us to
discover nothing but its extreme barbarity.

Before this cloud could be dispersed, the Saracens, another body of
barbarians from the South, animated by a fury not unlike that which gave
strength to the Northern irruptions, but heightened by enthusiasm, and
regulated by subordination and an uniform policy, began to carry their
arms, their manners, and religion, into every part of the universe.
Spain was entirely overwhelmed by the torrent of their armies, Italy and
the islands were harassed by their fleets, and all Europe alarmed by
their vigorous and frequent enterprises. Italy, who had so long sat the
mistress of the world, was by turns the slave of all nations. The
possession of that fine country was hotly disputed between the Greek
Emperor and the Lombards, and it suffered infinitely by that contention.
Germany, the parent of so many nations, was exhausted by the swarms she
had sent abroad.

However, in the midst of this chaos there were principles at work which
reduced things to a certain form, and gradually unfolded a system in
which the chief movers and main springs were the Papal and the Imperial
powers,--the aggrandizement or diminution of which have been the drift
of almost all the politics, intrigues, and wars which have employed and
distracted Europe to this day.

From Rome the whole Western world had received its Christianity; she was
the asylum of what learning had escaped the general desolation; and even
in her ruins she preserved something of t