29 



Blwch more must Horticulture have been interrupted, since its 

 chief patrons, the patricians of the state, were scarcely for 

 an hour secure in the possession of their properties and lives. 

 The morals, the virtues of the people gradually forsook them — 

 Law neglected — -Philosophy perverted — the language be- 

 coming barbarous-— literature nearly abandoned — foreign 

 " mercenaries admitted among the troops, and even to the civil 

 dignities. — By such means the bonds of union; the respecta- 

 bility of the Empire's institutions, and the nationality of its 

 manners were destroyed. It became a matter of indifference 

 to the people who were their rulers-«>patriotism was ex- 

 tinct; and after a feeble opposition the Empire was overrun 

 by the Barbarians of Northern Europe. 



Alaric, general of the Goths, A. D. 410, and Gesnoric, 

 king of the Vandals, in 455, successively pillaged the City, 

 and finally Italy was parcelled out into petty States. 



However we may laqient the ruin of so great a natiun, with 

 whose name is associated the excellence of all that is great ia 

 the Arts, and all that renders man ambitious ; — however we 

 may regret the ignorance that succeeded during the Middle 

 Ages, yet it is certain that by the dispersion of the Roman 

 people, and the increased intercourse which less enlightened 

 nations had with them by this means, that the seeds of improve- 

 ment were dispersed over Europe, and by degrees gave rise to 

 improvements which otherwise could only have been stumbled 

 upon by.chance during the slow progress of Ages. But above 

 all, the destruction of the Roman Empire, speajts trumpot- 

 tongued this lesson to mankind, that wealth the most unbound- 

 ed, and learning the most refined, and general, if unaccom- 

 panied by a fixed and moral Code, form but a hot bed in which 

 the seeds of civil incapacity and disSentiou rapidly germinate. 

 A fixed moral Code can alone check the rankness of such 

 growth, and a modern example has taught us that such a Code 

 is beyond the power of the human mind to invent. 



