its tributary streams, to heaps of stones and ashes. But there his ravages ceased. The great star, which burned as it were a lamp, no sooner fell upon the fountains and rivers of waters and turned cities into ashes, than it was extinguished. Unlike to the great mountain burning with fire, the great star that fell from heaven, after suddenly scorching a part of Italy, rapidly disappeared. During the same year in which Attila first invaded the Italian territories, and spread his ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy, which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Appenine, without advancing beyond the rivers and fountains of waters, he concluded a treaty of peace with the Romans, ‘at the conflux of the lake and river,' on the spot where Mincius issues from lake Benacus (L. di Garda.) One paragraph in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describes the invasion of Italy by Attila, A. D. 452.' Another is entitled, under the same date, 'Attila gives peace to the Romans.' The next paragraph describes the death of Attila, A. D. 453;' and the very next records, without any interval, the destruction of his empire.

"There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. Its greatness, its burning course, the place, the severity, and suddenness of its fall, leave nothing more to be here explained, while its falling from heaven seems obviously to imply that it came from beyond the bounds of the Roman empire, on part of which it fell. Allusion will afterwards be made to the significancy of the term third part, which so repeatedly occurs.

"But another verse is added, under the third trumpet, which, having thus seen the significancy of the former, we cannot pass over with any vague and general exposition, without calling on history to discharge its task, in expounding the full meaning of the words, which sum up the decline, and are the immediate prelude to the fourth trumpet, the death-knell of the western empire.

"And the name of the star is called Wormwood. These words, which are more intimately connected with the preceding verse, as even the punctuation in our version denotes,-recall us for a moment to the character of Attila, to the misery of which he was the author or the instrument, and to the terror that was inspired by his name.

"Total extirpation and erasure' are terms which best denote the calamities he inflicted.

"One of his lieutenants chastised and almost exterminated the Burgundians of the Rhine., The Thuringians served in the army of Attila; they traversed, both in their march and in their return, the territories of the Franks; and they massacred their hostages as well as their captives. Two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, or were crushed under the weight of rolling wagons; and their unburied limbs were abandoned on public roads, as a prey to dogs and vultures.'

"It was the boast of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot which his horse had trod. • The Scourge of God' was a name that he appropriated to himself, and inserted among his royal titles. He was the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world.' The western emperor, with

the senate and people of Rome, humbly and fearfully deprecated the wrath of Attila. And the concluding paragraph of the chapters which record his history, is entitled, Symptoms of the decay and ruin of the Roman government.'

of the star is called Wormwood.

The name

"In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian,' (two years subsequent to the death of Attila,) nine emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the EXTINCTION of the Roman empire in the west, did not leave a memorable era in the history of mankind.'”

I shall also permit the same author to give us the history of the

FOURTH TRUMPET.

Verse 12: "And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise."

"At the voice of the first angel, and the blast of his trumpet, the whole Roman world was in agitation, and 'the storms of war' passed over it all. 'The union of the empire was dissolved;' a third part of it fell; and the 'transalpine provinces were separated from the empire.' Under the second trumpet, the provinces of Africa, another, or the maritime, part, was in like manner reft from Rome, and the Roman ships were destroyed in

the sea, and even in their harbors. The empire of Rome, hemmed in on every side, was then limited to the kingdom of Italy. Within its bounds, and along the fountains and rivers of waters, the third trumpet re-echoed from the Alps to the Appenines. The last barrier of the empire of Rome was broken. The plains of Lombardy were ravaged by a foreign foe: and from thence new enemies arose to bring to an end the strife of the world with the imperial city.

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Though the union of the empire was dissolved, there was still an emperor in Rome. The majesty of the Roman name was not obliterated, though tarnished. And after the middle of the fifth century, the Cæsars had still a successor in their own city. But the palace of Milan could not again be the temporary abode of the Roman court, when it' was the seat and centre of a hostile power. And the marshes of Ravenna ceased to be a security, after the waters were made bitter, and when hordes of Huns mingled with other savages in the northern regions of Italy. The time, too, had long passed for realizing the project, which the terror of the Goths had first suggested, of transferring the court of Rome to the shores of Africa, and transforming Carthage into another Constantinople.

"The remnant, or the refuse, of previous invasions, was enough to destroy the last remaining parts of Roman greatness in Italy, and to abolish the office and the name of emperor of Rome.

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Long had that name been a terror to the nations, and identified with supreme authority in the world. Long had the emperor of Rome shone and ruled in the earth, like the sun in the firma

ment.

His was a kingdom and dominion, great, and terrible, and strong exceedingly, to which all others were subjected or subordinate. His supreme, or imperial authority, had, in the decline of the empire, been greatly obscured, but till then, it had never been extinguished. It had been darkened and disfigured by a great storm; eclipsed, as it were, by a mountain that burned with fire; and outshone, as it were, by a falling star, like a fiery meteor. It had survived the assaults of Goths and Vandals, and Huns. Though clouded and obscured, it had never been smitten:—and though its light reached but a little way, where previously it had shone over all, it had never been extinguished.

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Neither, at last, was the whole sun smitten: but the third part. The throne of the Cæsars had for ages been the sun of the world; while other kings were designated as stars. But the imperial power had first been transferred to Constantinople, by Constantine; and it was afterwards divided between the east and the west. And the Eastern empire was not yet doomed to destruction. Even the western empire was afterwards revived; and a more modern dynasty arose to claim and maintain the title of emperor of the Romans. But, for the first time, after sudden, and violent, and distinctly marked and connected convulsions, the imperial power in Rome, where for so long a period it had reigned triumphant, was cut off forever; and the third part of the sun was smitten.

"EXTINCTION of the western empire, A. D. 476, or A. D. 479. Royalty was familiar to the barbarians, and the submissive people of Italy were prepared to obey without a murmur the authority