His designs were concealed with impenetrable secresy till the moment that he hoisted sail. When he was asked by his pilot, what course he should steer-Leave the determination to the winds,' replied the barbarian, with pious arrogance-they will transport us to the guilty coast whose inhabitants have provoked the divine justice.' The Vandals repeatedly visited the coasts of Spain, Liguira, Tuscany, Campania, Leucania, Brutium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece, and Sicily; they were tempted to subdue the island of Sardinia, so advantageously placed in the centre of the Mediterranean, and their arms spread desolation or terror from the column of Hercules to the mouth of the Nile. In the treatment of his unhappy prisoners, he sometimes consulted his avarice, and sometimes his cruelty; he massacred five hundred noble citizens of Zante, or Zaynthus, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian sea."-[Gibbon, pp. 180—182, 187, 188.] A last and desperate attempt to dispossess Genseric of the sovereignty of the sea, was made in the year 468, by the emperor of the east. "The whole expense of the African campaign amounted to the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds of gold-about five millions two hundred thousand pounds sterling. The fleet that sailed from Constantinople to Carthage, consisted of eleven hundred and thirteen ships, and the number of soldiers and mariners exceeded one hundred thousand men. The army of Heraclius, and the fleet of Marcellinus, either joined or seconded the imperial lieutenant. The wind became favorable to the designs of Genseric. He manned his largest ship of war with the bravest of the Moors and Vandals, and they towed after them many large barks filled with combustible materials. In the obscurity of the night these destructive vessels were impelled against the unguarded and unsuspecting fleet of the Romans, who were awakened by a sense of their instant danger. Their close and crowded order assisted the progress of the fire, which was communicated with rapid and irresistible violence; and the noise of the wind, the crackling of the flames, the dissonant cries of the soldiers and marines, who could neither command nor obey, increased the horror of the nocturnal tumult. Whilst they labored to extricate themselves from the fire-ships, and to save at least a part of the navy, the galleys of Genseric assaulted them with temperate and disciplined valor; and many of the Romans who escaped the fury of the flames were destroyed or taken by the victorious Vandals. After the failure of this great expedition, Genseric again became the 'tyrant of the sea;' the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia were again exposed to his revenge and avarice. Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience; he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and before he died, in the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the final extinction of the empire of the west."-[Ibid., pp. 203, 205.] THIRD TRUMPET. In illustrating this trumpet, I shall make an extract entirely from Keith. "Verses 10, 11: And the third angel sounded, and 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 ; and the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.' "A third angel sounded ;—and a third name is associated with the downfall of the Roman empire. The sounding of the trumpets manifestly denotes the order of the commencement, not the period of the duration, of the wars, or events, which they represent. When the second angel sounded, there was seen, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire. When the third angel sounded, there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp. The symbol, in each instance, is expressly a similitude, and the one is to the other in comparative and individual resemblance, as a burning mountain to a falling star each of them was great. The former was cast into the sea, the latter was first seen as falling, and it fell upon the fountains and rivers of waters. There is a discrimination in the similitude, in the description, and locality, which obviously implies a corresponding difference in the object represented. "On such plain and preliminary observations we may look to the intimation given in the third trumpet, and to the achievements of Attila, the third name mentioned by Gibbon, and associated in equal rank with those of Alaric and Genseric, in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. "Genseric landed in Africa in the year 429, and in the following year spread desolation along its coast, throughout the long-extended territory of Rome, which was then finally separated from the empire. Attila invaded the eastern empire in the year 441. From that period, ten years elapsed before he touched the western empire, and twentytwo years intervened, from 429 to 451, between the invasion of Africa by Genseric, and of Gaul by Attila. The burning mountain arose first, though it blazed longer than the falling star. "The connexion between the events predicted under the first and second trumpets, is marked by the passing of the Vandals from Europe to Asia, and the consequent combination with Moors and Mauritanians in the conquest of Africa, 'the most important province of the west;' and in the overthrow of the naval power of Rome. The sequence and connexion between the events denoted by the second and third trumpets, are, we apprehend, equally definite. 666 "The alliance of Attila, (A. D. 441,) maintained the Vandals in the possession of Africa. An enterprise had been concerted between the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople, for the recovery of that valuable province, and the ports of Sicily were already filled with the military and naval forces of Theodosius. But the subtle Genseric, who spread his negotiations round the world, prevented their designs, by exciting the king of the Huns (Attila) to invade the eastern empire: and a trifling incident soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war. The troops which had been sent against Genseric were hastily recalled from Sicily.' "But if symbolized, or described under the second and third trumpet, the respective nature of their power, or character of their warfare, must needs be described, as well as the order be marked, in which Genseric and Attila first assaulted the empire of Rome, and accelerated its ruin. "A great star is the symbol-of which the significancy has to be sustained; burning as it were a lamp, is the character of the warfare. The locality is neither the earth, in the full extent of the term as applicable to the Roman empire, and the wide scene over which the hail and fire swept on the sounding of the first trumpet, nor yet the third part of the sea, as expressive of the second, by which the African coast was forever separated from the empire, and the ships finally destroyed,but, as referring to a portion of the remains of the empire of Rome-the fountains and rivers of waters. "There fell a great star from heaven. The name of Attila is to this day a memorial of his greatness, of which a brief description may suffice. "The crowd of vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial tribes, who served under the standard of Attila, were ranged in the submissive order of guards and domestics, round the person of their master. They watched his nod: they trembled at his frown; and, at the first signal of his will, they executed, without murmur or hesitation, his stern and absolute commands. In time of peace, the dependent princes, with their national troops, attended the royal camp in regular succession; but when Attila collected his military forces, he was able to bring into the field an army of five, or, according to another account, of seven hundred thousand barbarians.' tr Burning as it were a lamp.-The armies of the eastern empire were vanquished in three successive engagements; and the progress of Attila |