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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 Excerpt:...attributed to St. Benedict,! which said, that "Rome was not to be exterminated by the hands of Baron. Ann. 590, p. 13, says, he was obliged to unite parishes, in a great many instances, from want of pastors, f See Second book of St. Gregory's Dialogues. ROME WANTS A GOOD SAMARITAN. 209 barbarians; but tbat, exhausted by tempests, by whirlwinds of fire, and by earthquakes, it should of itself collapse into a heap of ruins;" and the holy pontiff, in one of his discourses to the people, appeals to the scenes by which they were actually surrounded to prove the truth of this prediction. "The lofty tree," says Gibbon, "was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt and continually feared. The Campagna was reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness; in which the land was barren, the water impure, and the air infectious. Curiosity and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of the world; but if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the city, and might be tempted to ask, 'Where is the senate, and where are the people?'" Such was the condition of the eternal city, when the successors of the fishermen were induced, not by ambition, but through mercy, to take it under their care and protection; and if those regions along the Tiber, which had been the theatre, for so many centuries, of all that was most illustrious and important in human affairs, have not long since reverted to a This is no proof that the desolation of the Campagna is a c...