Excerpt from History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 7 of 12 I now discharge my promise and complete my design of writing the History of the, De cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, both in the West and the East. The whole period extends from the-a'ge of Trajan and the An tonines, to the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet the second; and includes a review of the Crusades and the state of Rome during the middle ages. Since the publication of the first volume, twelve years have elapsed; twelve years, according to my wish, of health, of leisure, and of erseverance. I may now congratulate my deliverance from a long and laborious service, and my satisfac tion will be pure and perfect, if the public. Favour should be extended to the conclusion of my work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.