Quite of a piece with this is the said Mr Eustace's bigotry, in not chusing to call Lombardy by its usual appellation "Lombardy," and affectedly terming it "the plain of the Po." Why so, will be asked? Why because Mr Eustace hates the ancient Lombards, and holds them very nearly in as much horror as he does the modern French; because, as he says, they were the enemies of the Church and made war on and despoiled the Holy See. The fact is that the Lombard princes were the most enlightened of all the monarchs of their time; they were the first who began to resist the encroachments of the clergy and to shake off that abject submission to the Holy See which was the characteristic of the age. The Lombards were a fine gallant race of men and not so bigoted as the other nations of Europe. Where has there ever reigned a better and more enlightened and more just and humane prince than Theodoric?[56] But Theodoric was an Arian, hence Mr Eustace's aversion, for he, with the most servile devotion, rejects, condemns and anathematizes whatever the Church rejects, condemns and anathematizes. For myself I look on the extinction of the Lombard power by Charlemagne to have been a great calamity; had it lasted, the reformation and deliverance of Europe from Papal and ecclesiastical tyranny would have happened probably three hundred years sooner and the Inquisition never have been planted in Spain. I have made this digression from a love of justice and from a wish to vindicate the French Republic and Napoleon from one at least of the many unjust aspersions cast on them. I feel it also my duty to state on every occasion that I, belonging to an army sent to Egypt in order to expel them from that country, have been an eyewitness of the good and beneficial reforms and improvements that the French made in Egypt during a period of only three years. They did more for the good of that country in this short period, than we have done for India in fifty years. Being obliged to be in London on the 24th December I took leave of the agreeable city of Milan with much regret on the 19th of October and engaged a place in a Swiss _voiture_ going to Lausanne. My fellow travellers were two Brunswick officers in the service of the Princess of Wales, who were returning to their native country; and a Hungarian and his son settled in Domo d'Ossola. Nothing occurred till we arrived at Arona, where we were detained a whole day, in consequence of some informality in the passport of the two Germans, viz., that of its not having been _visé_ by the Sardinian Chargé d'Affaires at Milan.