a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince." Whilst he philosophized with the visionary Plotinus, or wasted his time in all the refined debaucheries of an emperor, the Franks ravaged Gaul and Spain; the Allemanni penetrated even into Italy; the cities of Bithynia were plundered by the Goths; the degenerate Sparta and Athens were captured by these barbarians. Gallienus the while, with all the indolent philosophy of indifference, received repeated intelligence of invasions, defeats, and rebellions; and, endeavouring by witticisms to laugh at infamy, singled out some particular production of the lost province, and carelessly asked, if Rome must be ruined unless it was supplied with linen from Egypt, or arras cloth from Gaul?

A succession of emperors, who had by personal valour risen from the lowest order of society, repressed the inroads of the barbarians, and for a time delayed the fall of Rome. But while they delivered their subjects from the Goths, they made them more effectually slaves. Despotism was systematized by Dioclesian; he assumed the diadem; his roses were of silk and gold; and exorbitant taxes became necessary to support an expensive and extravagant establishment. Yet Dioclesian grew sick of the pageant of empire, and retired to the more enviable rank of private life. "If (said the old emperor) I could show Maximian the cabbages which I have planted with my own hands at Salona, he would no longer urge me to relinquish the enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power.

Under Dioclesian the government was divided into four parts. He first took Maximian as his colleague on the throne; and afterwards created

two

two subordinate emperors, Constantius and Galerius, to assist them in the administration. This division of the government produced great disorders; it occasioned a four-fold civil and military establishment, each sovereign requiring an establishment equal to that of the former emperors; and hence the people were unable to support the accumulated taxes and imposts. The empire, however, was again united under Constantine the Great, who removed the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium (now Constan- 328. tinople). This proved a mortal blow to the empire; the western and eastern provinces were separated, and governed by different sovereigns; the Roman legions were withdrawn from the Rhine and the Danube to the east; and the barriers of the empire being thus thrown down, an easy admission was afforded to the invaders,

A. D.

NINTH PERIOD,

From the Division of the Empire to the Flight of Mohammed.

THE ninth period presents us with the decline and fall of the western empire. One horde of barbarians, like the waves of the sea, followed in the track of each other. The revolutions of Scythia drove fresh nations on the frontiers, and 1163 years after the foundation of Rome that city was sacked by the Goths. Shortly 410. afterwards the Burgundians established themselves in Alsace, Spain was occupied by the H 2 Vandals,

A. D.

Vandals, and the foundation of the French monarchy laid.

A.D.

The Huns, whose numbers and ferocity 420. had impelled the Goths upon the Roman empire, soon followed in the same career. Seven hundred thousand warriors obeyed the command of Attila: brutal in their appearance, and savage in their manners, they bore down every thing before them, and the tyrants of Rome and Constantinople trembled at the wrath of the Scythian conqueror. The victims of his thirst of dominion Attila the appellation of The scourge of God.

A.D.

gave

Italy alone remained to the Romans of all their mighty empire, and this was converted into a Gothic kingdom by Odoacer. Constanti476. 1ople, however, was still retained by the Eastern emperors. A few fugitives from the arms of Attila laid the foundations of Venice. In every other part the barbarians were triumphant, and wherever they settled they established the tenure of military service.

When a tribe determined to occupy any country they had subdued, they divided the conquered Jands, each soldier seizing his portion, as a settlement acquired by his sword. Of this he was the full and only proprietor. But to preserve this property from the vengeance of the ancient inhabitants, or from the more dangerous attacks of succeeding barbarians, every freeman bound himself to take arms for the general defence; which compact if he neglected or refused to perform, the hercbannum, or fine of sixty crowns, was levied upon him, and slavery or banishment was the consequence of insolvency. Allodial or independent property being thus subjected to military service, a new species of possession was gra

dually

dually introduced, adopted from their customs while they remained in their native woods. The German chiefs were ambitious of collecting round their own persons a number of detached and devoted followers; and we have before mentioned, that they increased the number and courted the favour of these their faithful attendants, by pre sents of arms and horses, and by profuse, though inelegant, hospitality. While fixed property in land was unknown, these were the only gifts and the only rewards which could be bestowed, or desired. The more substantial recompenses of estates were naturally substituted in place of these honourable trifles, when the value of landed property came to be understood among them.

Estates thus given were called beneficia, and in after ages feuda. And as by the allodial property the possessors were obliged to appear in arms in defence of the community, so by these feudal tenures they subjected themselves to personal service to him from whom they received such lands, The more powerful vassals soon obtained the confirmation of their benefices during life, and afterwards the right of hereditary possession. The vassals or beneficiaries of the crown moreover appropriated to themselves titles of honour; and these personal marks of distinction, which the public admiration had bestowed on existing merit, a natural vanity transmitted from father to son.

Lifted above the people and rendered independent of the sovereign, every kingdom was broken into as many separate principalities as it contained powerful barons. Thus endless causes of jealousy arose, and a wide-wasting anarchy prevailed. Hence the possessors of independent land, being exposed as individuals to rapine and oppression, found it necesH 3

sary

sary to seek powerful protectors, by whom and under whose banners they might repel enemies whom they could not singly oppose: and hence the allodial or independent property was generally changed into feudal tenures. Excepting the clerical order, all the advantages and privileges of society were confined to an insolent and oppressive nobility. The king, without prerogative and without authority, could neither protect the innocent nor punish the guilty. The nobles, when they were not combined to insult the sovereign, harassed each other by perpetual incursions, and enslaved their inferiors by the most grinding ope pressions.

The perversion of a pure and simple religion to the purposes of disseminating hatred and legalising slaughter, originated in the superstitions of those barbarous nations, whose manners and irruptions we have been describing. When they were converted to christianity, they changed the object, not the spirit, of their religious worship. The means by which they had been accustomed to conciliate the favour of their false deities, their absurd ceremonies, their confused doctrines, they still partially retained, under the idea of their being best adapted to render men acceptable to the all-wise Author of order and of reason.

Such were the evils which followed the establishment of the barbarians. What then must have been the horrors which accompanied their irruption! A contemporary historian of some emipence expressly declines the task of describing them, as beggaring the powers of language without success, and lacerating humanity without utility. The destruction of the human species was incredible.

But