72 



their habitations, and their sciences, should be replaced by 

 a race of gloomy, joyless, and furious demons of extermi- 

 nation, ministers of human chastisement, whose only virtue 

 was an unreflecting, ungoverned, and headlong valour; 

 whose only joy was the calamity of their fellow-creatures, 

 whose science was destruction. All the ingredients of hu- 

 man happiness and comfort were dashed to the ground. 

 All the elements of civil society were confounded, in dis- 

 cord and anarchy, by swarms scarcely human; whose man- 

 ners were as rude and barbarous as their language and 

 their names. The world was immersed in a general chaos; 

 and the fine arts Avere not only unknown, but forgotten. 



Sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda, 

 Lucis egens aer, nulli sua forma manebat, 

 Obstabatque aliis aliud. Ovid. 



Such is the picture, which historians are fond of giving 

 us, of the destruction of the Roman empire. However, it 

 must be confest, that the irruptions of the Goths, the 

 Vandals, and other barbarous swarms, Avhich overspread 

 the Roman provinces, did not destroy as much, as, at first 

 glance, might have appeared. They found the people sink- 

 ing fast into the barbarism of ignorance and depravity, 

 through the effects of luxury and evil government: a bar- 

 barism more fatal, in spirit and essence, though less dis- 

 gusting and terrific, in form, than that of their fierce and 

 uncultivated conquerors. AU love of fame, all true taste 

 for thej^"«e arts, all sense of right and wrong, were fled. It 



is 



