64 NATURE OF THE VENETIAN GOVERN MENT. Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, thou art a bitter draught!-STERNE. "THE vicissitudes of empires offer to the imagination no subject of more intense interest, than the long grandeur and the fall of Venice. Emerging from the bosom of the waves in the darkest ages of Italian misery, the Queen of the Adriatic-herself immoveable-became a mournful spectator of the long agony and dissolution of the Roman empire. For thirteen hundred years she witnessed in security the subsequent ravages of continental wars, the rise and declension of nations, the change of dynasties, the whole awful drama of human fate; until, 'the last surviving witness of antiquity, the common link between two periods of civilization,' she fell in her turn, and has reached the very lowest depths of abasement. "The existence of Venice may be dimly traced even in the obscurity of the long night which veiled the settlement of the northern tribes in Italy; her early liberty and commerce were the day-springs of modern civilization; and when the barons of Champagne and Flanders meditated the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre in the fourth crusade, they were fain to solicit the maritime co-operation of her who was already become the mistress of the Adriatic. In the rudeness and fervour of their religious zeal, they prostrated themselves with tears and supplications before the haughty merchant-kings of Venice. Their gold purchased the aid which they sought; but their enthusiasm was succeeded by wonder at the resources of the city, which could equip five hundred vessels for their service. The memorable diversion of their sacred expedition against the Greek empire, and the conquest of Constantinople, poured the treasures of the East into the lap of Venice; and her division of the spoil justified her doges in assuming the proud and accurate title of Dukes of three-eighths of the empire of Romania.' It was then that the trophies of Grecian art were transplanted to adorn the Place of St. Mark, and that the banners of her patron saint floated over the fairest islands. of the Grecian seas. It was then too that the republic began successfully to assert her exclusive navigation and sovereignty of the Adriatic; and that her doges first observed the annual ceremony of dropping a consecrated ring into the waves, as a symbol that, by such an espousal, the sea should be subject to them, as a bride to her lord. "With the conquest of Constantinople commenced the meridian splendour of Venice; and her star maintained its ascendant for three hundred years. The revival of the eastern empire deprived the republic of her portion of its capital; but she retained her possessions in the eastern seas; and a vast and increasing commerce swelled her enormous wealth. She held VOL. III. the gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West. F As the Greek empire crumbled into dust before the power of the sultans, Venice became the maritime bulwark of Christendom against their ferocious hostility. The Ottoman grandeur had not yet passed its zenith, when the republic was already on the decline; she was often forced into unequal collision with the gigantic masses and furious energy of the Turkish power; but even weakened as she was, Venice nobly braved the tempests of war with the infidel; and, by the constancy with which she maintained these stupendous conflicts, broke the violence and exhausted the force of that storm which had menaced Christian Europe with destruction. "The achievements of Venice in the east are as a silken thread of romance, continually interwoven in the long tissue of her annals. But her whole history is invested with a peculiar and striking character. Her deadly and protracted rivalry with Genoa; her heroic defence against that republic and other enemies in the desperate war of Chiozza; the singular career in which, with a native population composed only of marines, she extended her dominion over great part of Lombardy, and held the political balance of Italy; the envy and hatred which she excited in other nations; and the general coalition of Europe, which she provoked and repelled;—all these are circumstances of the highest historical attraction. But even these yield in interest to the fearful and imposing spectacle which is offered by the constitution and policy of her government—the gloomiest fabric of real despotism ever erected for the pretended security of republican freedom. History has no parallel to that silent, mysterious, inexorable tyranny; a tyranny to its subjects, Subtle, invisible, And universal as the air they breathed; A power that never slumbered, nor forgave, Most present when least thought of-nothing dropt Observed and judged-a power, that if but glanced at The speaker lowered at once his eyes, his voice, "Yet under this dark and relentless administration, Venice was the throne of pleasure, the chosen seat not only of Italian but of European festivity. The imagination may * A Frenchman of high rank, who had been robbed at Venice and had complained in conversation of the negligence of the police, saying that they were vigilant only as spies on the stranger, was on his way back to the Terra Firma, when his gondola stopped suddenly in the midst of the waves. He inquired the reason; and his gondoliers pointed to a boat with a red flag, that had just made them a signal. It arrived; and he was called on board. "You are the Prince de Craon? Were you not robbed on Friday evening?—I was. -Of what?—Of five hundred ducats.—And where were they?-In a green pursc. Do you suspect any body?—I do, a servant.-Would you know him again?-Certainly." The interrogator with his foot turned aside an old cloak that lay there; and the Prince beheld his purse in the hand of a dead man. "Take it; and remember that none set their feet again in a country where they have presumed to doubt the wisdom of the government."-Notes to Rogers's Italy. now fondly linger over what was then the present source of pride and gratification to the ambitious, the busy, and the gay-her picturesque situation, throned on her hundred isles-the magnificence of her Palladian structures -her churches and palaces of every style and decoration, slumbering on their shadows in the long-drawn aisles of her canals'-her docks, and her arsenals, stored with all the furniture of war-her quays so strangely crowded with the mingled costumes of the eastern and western world-glittering with the pageant, or heaped with costly merchandise-echoing the stream of music, the peal of merriment, or the busy hum of commerce. But her palaces and her prisons were contiguous; and while the masque and the revel encircled the edifice of government, that ancient pile covered abodes of misery, from which mercy and hope were alike excluded. During the gayest hours of Venetian pleasure, in the throng of the casino, or in the mazes of the carnival, individuals disappeared from society, and were heard of no more: to breathe an inquiry after their fate was a dangerous imprudence; even to mourn their loss was an act of guilt. Before the secret council of government, the informer was never confronted with the accused; the victim was frequently denied a hearing, and hurried to death, or condemned to linger for life in the dungeons of state; his offence and its punishment untried and unknown*." It was about the middle of the fifth century, that the See Quarterly Review, No. xxxvII. |