Again; Leo the Iconoclast Emperor destroyed the holy images in the East, and sent commands to the Exarch of Ravenna to destroy them in western Italy. Pope Gregory II. replied by renouncing allegiance to the Emperor of Constantinople; and by two famous letters which are still preserved; in which he tells the Iconoclast Emperor, that, 'if he went round the grammar-schools at Rome, the children would throw their horn-books at his head . . . that he implored Christ to send the Emperor a devil, for the destruction of his body and the salvation of his soul . . . that if he attempted to destroy the images in Rome, the pontiff would take refuge with the Lombards, and then he might as well chase the wind that the Popes were the mediators of peace between East and West, and that the eyes of the nations were fixed on the Pope's humility, and adored as a God on earth the apostle St. Peter. And that the pious Barbarians, kindled into rage, thirsted to avenge the persecution of the East.' Then Luitprand took up the cause of the Pope and his images, and of the mob, who were furious at the loss of their idols; and marched on Ravenna, which opened her gates to him, so that he became master of the whole Pentapolis; and image-worship, to which some plainspoken people give a harsher name, was saved for ever and a day in Italy. Why did Gregory II. in return, call in Orso, the first Venetian Doge, to expel from Ravenna the very Luitprand who had fought his battles for him, and to restore that Exarchate of Ravenna, of which it was confessed, that its civil quarrels, misrule, and extortions, made it the most miserable government in Italy? And why did he enter into secret negotiations with the Franks to come and invade Italy? Again, when Luitprand wanted to reduce the duchies of Beneventum and Spoleto, which he considered as rebels against him, their feudal suzerain; why did the next Pope, Gregory III., again send over the Alps to Charles Martel to come and invade Italy, and deliver the Church and Christ's people from ruin? And who were these Franks, the ancestors of that magnificent, but profligate aristocracy whose destruction our grandfathers beheld in 1793? I have purposely abstained from describing them, till they appear upon the stage of Italy, and take part in her fortunes--which were then the fortunes of the world.