I say to the Goths--with thousands who suffer the same tribulation that I now undergo--"Enter our gates! Level our palaces to the ground! Confound, if you will, in one common slaughter, we that are victims with those that are tyrants! Your invasion will bring new lords to the land.
They cannot crush it more--they may oppress it less.

Our posterity may gain their rights by the sacrifice of lives that our country has made worthless.

Romans though we are, we are ready to suffer and submit!"' He stopped; for by this time he had lashed himself into fury.

His eyes glared, his cheeks flushed, his voice rose.

Could he then have seen the faintest vision of the destiny that future ages had in store for the posterity of the race that now suffered throughout civilised Europe, like him--could he have imagined how, in after years, the 'middle class', despised in his day, was to rise to privilege and power; to hold in its just hands the balance of the prosperity of nations; to crush oppression and regulate rule; to soar in its mighty flight above thrones and principalities, and rank and riches, apparently obedient, but really commanding;--could he but have foreboded this, what a light must have burst upon his gloom, what a hope must have soothed him in his despair! To what further extremities his anger might have carried him, to what proceedings the indignant Gordian, who still listened from his concealment, might have had recourse, it is difficult to say; for the complaints of the ill-fated landholder and the cogitations of the authoritative bailiff were alike suddenly suspended by an uproar raging at this moment round a carriage which had just emerged from the palace we have elsewhere described.
This vehicle looked one mass of silver.