Nor was it less morally. The
destruction of Rome was not only a destruction of an empire, it was
the destruction of a phase of human thought, of a system of human
beliefs, of morals, politics, civilisation, as all these had existed
in the world for ages. The drama is so vast, the cataclysm so
appalling, that even at this day we are hardly removed from it far
enough to take it fully in. The mind is oppressed, the imagination
flags under the load imposed upon it. The capture and sack of a town
one can fairly conceive: the massacre, outrage, the flaming roofs, the
desolation. Even the devastation of a province can be approximately
reproduced in thought. But what thought can embrace the devastation
and destruction of all the civilised portions of Europe, Africa, and
Asia? Who can realise a Thirty Years War lasting five hundred years? a
devastation of the Palatinate extending through fifteen generations?
If we try to insert into the picture, as we undoubtedly should do, the
founding of the new, which was going on beside this destruction of the
old, the settling down of the barbarian hosts in the conquered
provinces, the expansion of the victorious Church, driving paganism
from the towns to the country and at last extinguishing it entirely,
the effort becomes more difficult than ever.
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