"Beautiful Emma! how diffident and girlish she was when she came to me to-day, dreading lest she should be disturbing me, dreading lest she should be intruding, dreading lest she was trespassing on my friendship! And the woman, who came to me with a frank kiss, brought with her the secrets of a nation, which she set forth better than Acton would have done, or her husband the Ambassador. "I have now, I think, before me the whole history leading up to the present situation in the Neapolitan kingdom. I have the attitude and treacherous designs of the French, the policy of the Emperor, the state of the kingdom. I think the presence of these French at Castellana in the Roman state--thirteen thousand of them, better troops, I should judge, than any the Queen can put in the field--a most serious menace, not only for their power in the field, which she ought to be able to balance if she gets a good general: there is one, I hear, to come from Austria--Neapolitan commanders cannot be relied on. But the principal danger lies not so much in their power in the field as in the danger of their pernicious ideas, spreading among the disaffected in the Neapolitan kingdom with a knowledge of there being such a strong basis to rally on. "It seems that their Majesties can put into the field an army of thirty or forty thousand fine troops, who will follow their leaders anywhere, and not only out of the battle-field, as they would certainly have to, if led by their own commanders. With these one might dispose of the French thirteen thousand in the Roman state, especially if one could land a few thousand men at Leghorn to cut them off from their base, and get the Emperor to march his armies. But this is exactly what the Emperor is determined not to do unless we force him, because he says that we must wait for the French attack. Now this is what I never have done in any of my principal actions. It has ever been my custom to seek the enemy and deliver my attack at the earliest possible moment, and I have found this answer above expectation with the French, who always credit the attacker with having the superior force. "I should like to write to the Queen or the Ambassador, but am restrained by the fact that they have not asked me formally to give any opinion, and it would be like pushing myself into the command of their forces. But there is no corresponding reason why I should not place a summary of my views in the hands of Lady H., to be by her communicated to the Ambassador and Her Majesty. I shall write to her as follows:-- "'Naples, Oct. 3rd, 1798. "'My dear Madam,--