THE HUNS OF ATTILA. 215 



victims. In each succeeding year as summer approached, these 

 herdsmen and shepherds were wont to seek fresher pastures on 

 the hill-sides in the distant northv Again, as winter drew near, 

 they sought the protected valleys of the south, ordinarily herd- 

 ing back and forth by the beaten tracks of former seasons. But 

 anon, as the herd-boy's call sounds on the eventide to gather in 

 his flocks, a rumor is borne to the startled camp, that tribe after 

 tribe, in the far reaches of the east and the north, on the war- 

 horse and the car, are sweeping on in the course of the setting 

 sun. Sharp and hasty sounds the note of preparation to the 

 bustling throng; and ere the morning dawns the warrior 

 mounts his steed, the women and the children scramble to their 

 seats on the w^agon, the oxen are inspanned, the flocks and the 

 herds are started on, and the driver whoops his shrill cry for the 

 march. Thus, 



"Oft o'er the trembling nations from afar, 

 Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war; 

 And where the deluge burst, with sweeping sway, 

 Their arms, their kings, their gods, were rolled away, 

 As oft have issued, host impelling host, 

 The blue-eyed myriads of the Baltic coast. 

 The prostrate south to the destroyer yields 

 Her boasted titles and her golden fields. 

 With grim delight the brood of winter view 

 A brighter day and heavens of azure hue, 

 Scent the new fragrance of the blushing rose, 

 And quaff the pendant vintage as it grows."* 



Four hundred years had passed away since the wise men of 

 the east had hailed the rising star of the Babe of Bethlehem. 

 Christianity from its feeble beginning had come to be a religion 

 of state. The pontiffs of Rome then ruled in temporal matters, 

 and the mandates of the church went forth to curb and to unseat 

 kings. The tribes of Gaul (or France) had become Christianized 

 and were the allies of Christian Rome. The empire itself had 

 lost as yet but little of its nominal power, though governed by 

 two emperors, the one having his seat in the east on the Bos- 

 phorus and the other in the ancient capitol on the Tiber. But in 



* From a fragment of a poem by Thomas Gray. Mason's Life of Gray, p. 196. 



