ble sanctuary of the
Vatican. The learned work, concerning the _City of God_, was professedly
composed by St. Augustine, to justify the ways of Providence in the
destruction of the Roman greatness. He celebrates, with peculiar
satisfaction, this memorable triumph of Christ; and insults his
adversaries by challenging them to produce some similar example of a
town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been
able to protect either themselves or their deluded votaries.

In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican, and the apostolic churches, could receive a very small
proportion of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially
of the Huns, who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to
the name, or at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect,
without any breach of charity or candor, that in the hour of savage
license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was
removed, the precepts of the Gospel seldom influenced the behavior of
the Gothic Christians. The writers the best disposed to exaggerate their
clemency have freely confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the
Romans; and that the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies,
which remained without burial during the general consternation. The
despair of the citizens was sometimes converted into fury; and whenever
the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the
promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless. The
private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised without pity or
remorse; and the ignominious lashes which they had formerly received
were washed away in the blood of the guilty or obnoxious families. The
matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in
the apprehension of chastity, than death itself; and the ecclesiastical
historian has selected an example of female virtue for the admiration of
future ages.

A Roman lady, of singular beauty and orthodox faith, had excited the
impatient desires of a young Goth, who, according to the sagacious
remark of Sozomen, was attached to the Arian heresy. Exasperated by her
obstinate resistance, he drew his sword, and, with the anger of a lover,
slightly wounded her neck. The bleeding heroine still continued to brave
his resentment and to repel his love, till the ravisher desisted fro