Here was the first of the three opportunities of a descent southwards, which were open to the choice of emigrants. A portion of them, attracted by the rich pasture-land and general beauty of Sogdiana, took up their abode there; the main body wandered on. They turned northward, and skirted Siberia and the north of the Caspian, crossed the Volga, then the Don, and thus in the fifth century of the Christian era, as I just now mentioned, came upon the Goths, who were in un-disturbed possession of the country. Now it would appear, that, in this long march from the wall of China to the Danube, lasting as it did through some centuries, they lost hold of no part of the tracts which they traversed.

They remained on each successive encampment long enough (if I may so express myself) to sow themselves there. They left behind them at least a remnant of their own population, while they went forward, like a rocket thrown up in the sky, which, while it shoots forward, keeps possession of its track by its train of fire. And hence it was that Attila, when he found himself at length in Hungary, and elevated to the headship of his people, became at once the acknowledged king of the vast territories and the untold populations which that people had been leaving behind them in the last 350 years.

Such a power indeed had none of the elements of permanence in it, but it was appalling at the moment, whenever there was a vigorous and unscrupulous hand to put it into motion. Such was Attila; it was his boast, that, where his horse once trod, there grass never grew again. As he fulfilled his terrible destiny, religious men looked on with awe, and called him the " Scourge of God". He burst as a thunder-cloud upon the whole extent of country, now called Turkey in Europe, along a line of more than five hundred miles, from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Venice.

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