Rhine from south to north, even in "Merovingian" times, that the use of the word to designate a special style of writing is hardly desirable. It is probable enough that in the seventh century and the early part of the eighth a kind of uniformity existed in the writing used in all the region between Paris and Mentz, but it was nothing else than Roman uncials, semiuncials, and minuscules written in more or less cramped and graceless fashion; varying only in the degree of badness according to the locality. It is Roman cacography with a Germanic stamp upon it. There was a decided improvement in it when the eighth century was in progress. {40}The Lombardic hand is also a Roman hand as written by or for barbarians who lived nearer to the centre of civilisation than the Franks did. To justify its name it would be necessary to show that it originated and was practised in the region we call Lombardy in the seventh century. There is, however, no trace of its existence before the ninth century, and very little show of its having been used to any extent in Cisalpine Gaul. Most of the surviving examples of its employment as a national or local script indicate Eastern and Southern Italy as its home during the ninth to the twelfth century; while most of the manuscripts produced in Lombardy and northern Italy during that time belong rather to the Carolingian type. In fact, the Carolingian minuscule, the Visigothic minuscule, and the Lombardic minuscule all show at their beginning so much similarity that we look for examples of the latter two sufficiently early to decide a doubt which arises--which of the three was the fountain head of modern letters. The chief marks of distinction in the Lombardic through its whole career are the _t_ shaped nearly like _a_, and the _a_ shaped like _cc_. The Visigothic _t_ is identical with the Lombardic; and in the _a_ there is so little unlikeness that the form of the letter seems to be something halfway between _u_ and _cc_. (It is equivalent to _cc_ without their beaks or initial knobs.) The circumstance that two scripts so widely removed in place should retain common peculiarities, down to the very end of their severed existence, leads to a suspicion that the so-called Lombardic was probably a post-Ulfilan Ostrogothic. The peculiarities referred to, and some others which need not be specialised, are also found in the "Merowing" writing of books produced west of the Rhine in the seventh century. Now as Carolingian writing is quite free from these peculiarities, we can safely conclude that the Lombardic and the Visigothic are both older than the time of Charles the Great. It is usually supposed by those who see the difficulty attaching to the use of the name Lombardic, that the mode {41}of writing so styled was used in the kingdom of the Longbeards, but died out in its chief home after the conquest by the Franks, and only maintained a continued existence in the Neapolitan duchies held by princes of Lombardic origin.