"_December 5th_ (_later_).--Am back in Naples in my home. I cannot but regard it as my home; for here I have met with the most complete rest and happiness which I have known in my lifetime, spent in loneliness on the sea for the best part of thirty years. Her Majesty and Sir William and dear Emma met me on the steps of the little port they call the Arsenal. They seemed mightily glad to have me returned: Her Majesty saying that she should now feel safe whatever fortune befel her arms; and Sir William, that his house had been like a monastery since I sailed to Leghorn. While Emma said nothing, but laughed and cried a little, and poured out the gladness of her heart in looks and smiles, till we got to the palace, where Sir William said kindly: 'Kiss her mopes away, and see if you cannot get me back my merry Emma,--she has been sick for the sight of you. Only I know what an affectionate heart it is, that feels as if something had been torn out of it by the roots, when it is deprived of the sight of one it loves.' And, thus adjured, she came to me and wept silently on my shoulder; and then, giving me a happy kiss, went back to her husband and got into his arm, and said in the prettiest way in the world, 'I am sorry to have been such a moper, and you are the best husband alive, and I will be good now.' Adding, with a flash of mischief from the laughing eyes--'Now that I have the moon back that I cried for.' And he held his arm around her with the affection, as it seemed to me, of a father rather than a husband, and looked down on her with the fondest pride. But he did not kiss her; he treated her rather as a favourite child. "_Dec. 6th._--The state of this country is briefly this: the army is at Rome, Civita Vecchia taken, but in the Castle of St. Angelo are 500 French troops. The French have 13,000 troops at a strong post in the Roman State, called Castellana. General Mack is gone against them with 20,000; the event in my opinion is doubtful, and on it hangs the immediate fate of Naples. If Mack is defeated, this country, in fourteen days, is lost; for the Emperor has not yet moved his army, and if the Emperor will not march, this country has not the power of resisting the French. But it was not a case of choice, but necessity, which forced the King of Naples to march out of his country, and not to wait till the French had collected a force sufficient to drive him, in a week, out of his kingdom. "Have wrote to Commander Duckworth to congratulate him on the conquest of Minorca--an acquisition invaluable to Great Britain, and completely in future prevents any movements from Toulon to the westward. My situation in this country has had doubtless _one_ rose plucked from a bed of thorns. Nor is my present state that of ease; and my health, at best but indifferent, has not mended lately.