Such pretensions, of course, grew but slowly. It was not, I believe, till the year 875, 180 years after the time of which I am speaking, that Pope John VIII. distinctly asserted his right, as representative of the ancient Roman Empire, to create the Caesar; and informed the Synod of Pavia that he had 'elected and approved Charles the Bald, with the consent of his brothers the bishops, of the other ministers of the Holy Roman Church, and' (significant, though empty words) 'of the Roman senate and people.' At the time of which I speak, the power was still in embryo, growing, through many struggles: but growing surely and strongly, and destined speedily to avenge the fall of Rome on the simple barbarians who were tearing each other to pieces over her spoils. It is not easy to explain the lasting and hereditary hatred of the Popes to the Lombards. Its origin is simple enough: but not so its continuance. Why they should be nefandissimi in the eyes of Pope Gregory the Great one sees: but why 100 years afterwards, they should be still nefandissimi, and 'non dicenda gens Langobardorum,' not to be called a nation, is puzzling. At first, of course, the Pope could only look on them as a fresh horde of barbarous conquerors; half heathen, half Arian. Their virtuous and loyal life within the boundaries of Alboin's conquests--of which Paulus Diaconus says, that violence and treachery were unknown--that no one oppressed, no one plundered--that the traveller went where he would in perfect safety--all this would be hid from the Pope by the plain fact, that they were continually enlarging their frontier toward Rome; that they had founded two half-independent Dukedoms of Beneventum and Spoleto, that Autharis had swept over South Italy, and ridden his horse into the sea at Reggio, to strike with his lance a column in the waves, and cry, 'Here ends the Lombard kingdom.' The Pope (Gregory the Great I am speaking of) could only recollect, again, that during the lawless interregnum before Autharis' coronation, the independent Lombard dukes had plundered churches and monasteries, slain the clergy, and destroyed the people, who had 'grown up again like corn.' But as years rolled on, these Arian Lombards had become good Catholics; and that in the lifetime of Gregory the Great. Theodelinda, the Bavarian princess, she to whom Autharis had gone in disguise to her father's court, and only confessed himself at his departure, by rising in his stirrups, and burying his battle-axe in a tree stem with the cry, 'Thus smites Autharis the Lombard,'--this Theodelinda, I say, had married after his death Agilwulf his cousin, and made him king of the Lombards.