In this period of anarchy, and during the sway of the Lombards, the circumstances of the times gave to the Popes a paramount authority in the internal administration of the city and district of Rome; as well as a general political influence over all Italy;--an influence which was for the most part very salutary, and tended effectually to ensure the public peace and prosperity. I must here observe that this political position and power of the Popes, so naturally adapted to the circumstances of the times, and to the general situation of the Western world, was first put in a clear and correct point of view by writers not belonging to the Catholic church. For the political historians on the Catholic side have, in almost every country, retained too lively a recollection of the warm disputes as to the respective limits and rights of the ecclesiastical and secular power, not to be swayed by such feelings in their conception and accounts of an age long gone by; and this has certainly weakened the impartiality becoming the tribunal of history. After the subversion of the Ostro-Goth dominion in Italy, the disgrace or even dissatisfaction of the Byzantine General, Narses, provoked the incursion of the Lombards into Italy. This people were not so exclusively devoted to the Arian party, as a portion of them, and several among their kings, professed the Catholic religion; but they were far from possessing the mild, generous character of the Goths, and their sway often proved oppressive in Italy. Yet every thing appeared more desirable and more tolerable in the opinion of many otherwise unprejudiced historians, than the impending danger of Byzantine rule. When in the middle of the seventh century, the Greek Emperor Constans II. waged war in Italy against the Lombards, and in the course of the war conquered Rome, the plunder, especially of the treasures of ancient art, was so immense, that compared with these Greek devastations, all the earlier and destructive ravages of the Goths appeared to be nothing. The ships which were conveying to Constantinople all these plundered treasures of art, fell into the hands of the Arabs, and were destroyed, so that it was never known what became of their valuable freight. So true it is, that Rome perished solely and entirely by her own hand, by internal discord, and the weight of her own corruption, and not by the hands of Germans or of Goths.