56 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book I.

disdain. “ We Lombards,” cried one of theirchiefs, “ like the Visigoths, Burgundians, andothers of our countrymen, so completely despisethe very name of Roman, that, when in a passionwith our enemies, we know of nothing more in-jurious than calling them Romans; for in thatsingle term is included all that is imaginable ofmost ignoble, most slavish, most miserly, mostcorrupt, most lying—and in one word, every vice!”So the valiant Lombard, having bought with thedearest price, his blood, the whole valley of thePo (or, as Dante calls it, “ the valley between theseas”), he fixed his government within that sacredpale, and thence, as from a home, scattered abouthis outposts, from the Alps to Calabria, with thesternest resolution to profit by the warning, andnot vitiate his own vital stream by mingling itwith that of a degenerate breed; and for years didthat reluctance continue; and the Lombards wenton increasing, and the Romans diminishing, untilnearly or quite extinct about the Milanese, or withslender exceptions, slaves; not a single native pro-prietor there, but, if he survived, expatriated; everyacre of that whole tract of country became exclu-sively Lombard property. Yet, even theseproudest, most intrepid of Northmen, little bylittle, lost some part of their attachment to those