It does not enter into my subject to tell you how this ferocious conqueror was stayed in the course of blood and fire which was carrying him towards Rome, by the great St. Leo, the Pope of the day, who undertook an embassy to his camp. It was not the first embassy which the Romans had sent to him, and their former negociations had been associated with circumstances which could not favourably dispose the Hun to new overtures. It is melancholy to be obliged to confess, that, on that occasion, the contrast between barbarism and civilization had been to the advantage of the former.

The Romans, who came to Attila to treat upon the terms of an accommodation, after various difficulties and some insults, had found themselves at length in the Hun- nish capital, in Hungary, the sole city of an empire which extended for some thousand miles. In their number were those, who were conducting an intrigue with Attila's own people for his assassination, and who actually had with them the imperial gold which was to be the price of the crime. Attila was aware of the conspiracy, and showed his knowledge of it; but, from respect for the law of nations and of hospitality, he spared the guilty instrument or author.

Sad as it is to have to state such practices of an Imperial Court professedly Christian, still it is not unwelcome, for the honour of our nature, to discover in consequence of them those vestiges of moral rectitude which the degradation of ages had not obliterated from the Tartar character. It is well known, that, when Homer, 1,500 years before, speaks of these barbarians, he calls them, on the one hand, " drinkers of mare's milk", on the other " the most just of men". Truth, honesty, justice, hospitality, according to their view of things, are the historical characteristics, it must be granted, of Scythians, Tartars, and Turks, down to this day; and Homer perhaps, as other authors after him, was the more struck with such virtues in these wild shepherds, in contrast with the subtlety and perfidy, which, then as now, were the qualities of his own intellectually gifted countrymen.

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