OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 271 fortunes of the suffering people were presumptuously compared with those of their ancestors ; and they arraigned the Divine Justice, which did not exempt from the common destruction the feeble, the guiltless, the infant portion of the human species. These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with indus- try, and safety with valour. The timid and selfish policy of the court of Ravenna might recall the Palatine legions for the pro- tection of Italy ; the remains of the stationary troops might be unequal to the arduous task ; and the Barbarian auxiliaries might prefer the unbounded licence of spoil to the benefits of a moderate and regular stipend. But the provinces of Gaul were filled with a numerous race of hardy and robust youth, who, in the defence of their houses, their families, and their altars, if they had dared to die, would have deserved to vanquish. The knowledge of their native country would have enabled them to oppose continual and insuperable obstacles to the progress of an invader ; and the deficiency of the Barbarians, in arms as well as in discipline, removed the only pretence which excuses the submission of a populous country to the inferior numbers of a veteran army. When France was invaded by Charles the Fifth, he inquired of a prisoner how many dmj.s Paris might be distant from the frontier. " Perhaps twelve, but they will be days of battle ;" ^^ such was the gallant answer which checked the arrogance of that ambitious prince. The subjects of Honorius and those of Francis I. were animated by a very different spirit ; and in less than two years the divided troops of the savages of the Baltic, whose numbers, were they fairly stated, would appear contemptible, advanced without a combat to the foot of the Pyrenaean mountains. In the early part of the reign of Honorius, the vigilance of Revolt of the Stilicho had successfully guarded the remote island of Britain a^d. "407"^^' from her incessant enemies of the ocean, the mountains, and the Irish coast.'-"' But those restless Barbarians could not neglect the 95 See M^moires de Guillaume du Bellay, I. vi. In French the original reproof is less obvious and more pointed, from the double sense of the word journee, which signifies a day's travel or a battle. 96 Claudian (i. Cons. Stil. 1. ii. 250). It is supposed that the Scots of Ireland invaded, by sea, the whole western coast of Britain ; and some slight credit may be given even to Nennius and the Irish traditions (Carte's Hist, of England, vol. i. p. 169. Whitaker's Genuine History of the Britons, p. 199). The sixty-six lives of St. Patrick, which were extant in the ninth century, must have contained as many thousand lies ; yet we may believe that, in one of these Irish inroads, the future apostle was led away captive (Usher, Antiquit. Eccles. Britann. p. 431, and Tillemont, M^m. Eccles. torn. xvi. p. 456, 782, &c.).
