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."

The fulness of the comment needs nothing to complete it, but a repetition of the text. And the second angel sounded, and, AS IT WERE, a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

CHAPTER XVI.

THIRD TRUMPET.

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 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.

* Gibbon's Hist. pp. 203, 205.

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 twenty-two 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.

"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 storm of 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 for ever 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

Gibbon's Hist. vol. vi. 49, 50, 52, chap. 34.