Venice abandoned herself to the luxurious lethargy in which Italy was for the most part wrapped, and seemed to think she had done enough for glory. During the long years of the eighteenth century a peace party grew up within her walls, not wholly unlike that which decided the fate of her Grecian prototype in the days of Demosthenes. Indeed, the examples of both Athens and Venice are most instructive to all great commercial states, which have a constant tendency to become forgetful of those higher obligations, respect for which is absolutely essential to the preservation of their moral greatness. They are only too apt to imagine that all other nations will reason like themselves; and to imitate the rich man in the parable, who bade his soul take her ease; eat, drink, and be merry, for she had much riches laid up. That night his soul was required of him. So Athens kept on repeating that Philip couldn't wish to invade her, till she found herself prostrate at his feet. And so at length, when the storm of the French Revolution burst over Europe, the Venetians fondly trusted that the new dispenser of crowns would heed the appeal which they could justly make-to the peaceful disposition and neutral policy of their country. Relying on this broken reed, they succeeded in outvoting the party which advocated more energetic measures, and left Venice at the mercy of the invader. Her citi zens, long unused to war, were averse alike to its expenses and its toils. They had long found, in art, in literature, and the elegant vices of luxurious idleness, a substitute for the sword of their ancestors; and history tells us how next to impossible it is to waken men from this pleasing dream. What Venice could have done, had she devoted herself to energetic resistance sixty years ago, we cannot say. But she did nothing, and fell, though not without dignity, yet without glory.

Such is a brief outline of the fortunes of the famous republic, which Mr. Hazlitt has only brought down to the middle of the fifteenth century. With his assistance, we will now take a glance at her most characteristic laws, customs, and manners, in the days of her ancient splendour. Her civil and criminal code do not present any very remarkable features; the former was comparatively reasonable; the latter was not sanguinary; though the theft of money above forty lire, or about £300, was a capital

offence. The laws of debt, however, seem to have been, on the whole, remarkably favourable to creditors. It was probably necessary, in a commercial state, to afford facilities to credit; and we see from the usury laws, that it was rather the person than the offence against which the vigilance of the state was directed. When an action was brought against a citizen for the recovery of a debt, if the suit was decided against him, the judge granted a writ of ne exeat ducatu, but nothing more could be done by the plaintiff till the expiration of twelve months; at the end of that time, if the defendant still held out, immediate execution was granted. Thus we see, that in any ordinary case Antonius would have had plenty of time to make good his obligations to Shylock; and indeed, when so large a portion of the population depended upon commerce for their incomes, and before bills of exchange, and other modes of anticipating the value of a cargo had come into vogue, it was perhaps. unavoidable to grant liberal terms to all creditors. In the penal code of Venice, mutilation held the same place which it did at that time in most European countries. Forgers and coiners were condemned to the loss of a hand; burglars, adulterers, and ravishers were punished by "exoculation" as well, unless in the two latter cases a suitable indemnity was forthcoming. Of capital punishments there were four kinds—

Starvation, decapitation, strangulation, and hanging. The first was accounted the most cruel; the second was generally adopted by preference in cases of political conspiracy; the third was the rarest and the least ignominious; and the fourth was the common method of disposing of ordinary malefactors who were doomed to suffer the extreme penalty of

the law.

In the starving process, the condemned, having been led to the Campanile, was there enclosed in a large wooden cage with iron bars, suspended by a strong chain from a pole attached to the building; and he was fed on a diminishing scale with bread and water which he received by letting down a cord (so strong is the love of life!) until the unfortunate wretch, exposed to every weather, perished of cold, hunger, and misery. Such was a method of punishment in extreme cases, which is known to have prevailed largely in the Peninsula during the dark ages, and to the invention of which the Venetians are not believed to be entitled.

Torture, at all events in the better days of Venice, was used only under such precautions as robbed it of its worst features.

No person could be subjected to the process, "unless a certain number of the privy council, and the forty electors were present to take depositions, and to observe that no undue cruelty was exercised."

Of the administrative system of Venice, the naval part is of course that which excites the most interest in an Englishman, Down to the middle of the fourteenth century, Venice, according to Mr. Hazlitt, had no regular ships of war. She was dependent for an efficient fleet upon her grand mercantile marine, out of which a sufficient number could always be impressed to meet an emergency. The government paid a certain price for the use of these vessels if it was demanded, which it frequently was not; and, at the cessation of hostilities, they were returned to their original owners. The organization of their fleets, however, for actual service, showed less practical wisdom than many other parts of their system; though, no doubt, it had its origin in a jealousy that was not wholly groundless, inasmuch as we find it to have been in use among the Spartans in ancient, and the Dutch in modern times; both of which states, in the aristocratic structure of their governments, bore a nearer resemblance to Venice than to any other European state. The practice to which we refer, was that of appointing certain civil assessors to supervise the operations of the commander-in-chief, and to tender him their advice upon any more than usually critical occasion. The ill effects of this system were often discernible in the history of Venice; and once it nearly led to the deepest humiliation of the republic, by causing a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Genoese, at the end of the thirteenth century. The laws which regulated her mercantile system would doubtless at the present day be considered vexatious. No vessel was allowed to lade more than two feet and a quarter above the water line, or to stow away goods between decks. Consignees were compelled to remove their goods from shipboard within two days of the ship's arrival in port, or to pay a fine to the state of two lire1 a day, for every day beyond that time. It is probable, that partly the construction of the vessels, and partly the fact that a considerable revenue was so raised in a tolerably unobjectionable manner, were the justifi

1 The small lire, probably, of which two made a ducat.

cations of this practice, which would doubtless be regarded with great impatience in among ourselves.

In what we now understand by police, Venice was at one time as deficient as other states of the period. But the peculiarities of her government, and we may perhaps surmise the construction of the city as well, led to an early improvement of this department of state. The jealous spirit of an oligarchic corporation would encourage the employment of spies; and the facilities afforded by her numerous and badly fenced canals for the perpetration of deeds of violence, would greatly enhance the necessity of a bold and active watch. From the union of these offices sprang the modern Venetian police, which was deficient in none of the odious features which a secret detective force is commonly found to manifest.

The social evil in Venice was treated with opprobrium, but with few or no efforts at suppression. Young women who chose that mode of life were obliged to wear a parti-coloured dress; and the houses which they frequented were set apart in a particular district. Beyond this arrangement no interference was attempted; although these abodes of the sisterhood were too frequently the refuge of outlaws, assassins, and conspirators. One attempt that was made to suppress them altogether signally failed, and was never afterwards renewed.

Of the monetary system and existing wealth of Venice, Mr. Hazlitt has brought together many very interesting particulars. As at Athens, no inconsiderable share of the public expenses were allowed to be defrayed by individual liberality. We have seen that merchants frequently gave up their ships for the service of the statė without demanding any compensation; every great family, moreover, was obliged by law to maintain an armoury, from which it was required at an emergency to furnish arms for the state.

In truth, says Mr. Hazlitt, while the Venetian nobility sought from the earliest times to be exclusive in the enjoyment of political power, it courted rather than evaded the responsibilities of such power; and, whatever might be the vices of the system of government which it established, neither excessive taxation, nor arbitrary levies, nor oppres sive imposts, were often to be reckoned among them. To one class indeed the Republic was made to owe her greatness; and the debt was more than fully repaid.

We should be glad, however, of a much more complete account of the Venetian system of taxation than Mr. Hazlitt has given us; and in his statement of revenue and expenditure he has been guilty of a strange oversight. He has given us the table of revenue, but has forgotten the table of expenditure. From the former we learn that the gross revenue of Venice, in the middle of the fifteenth century, was equal to about a million sterling of our money; that of this about two hundred thousand was absorbed by the expense of collection, leaving about eight hundred thousand pounds for the uses of the state. Of this whole amount, as far as we can gather from Mr. Hazlitt's mode of statement, rather less than one-fourth was raised by direct taxation. In what proportions it was allotted to the various requirements of the state we should have been glad to know, and perhaps in a future edition Mr. Hazlitt will remedy the omission. At present all we know is, that for the Doge's privy purse and household expenses a sum was allowed of three thousand lire a month. But, as Mr. Hazlitt does not tell us whether he means the larger or the lesser lire, we are again thrown upon conjecture. The larger lire equalled ten gold ducats, or seven pounds of our money; the lesser one only half a ducat, or about seven shillings. Twenty-one thousand pounds a month, equal to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, seems a large sum in those days even for Venice. Yet one thousand pounds a month, which will be the amount if we assume the smaller coin to be intended, seems nearly as much too little.1 Our readers must judge for themselves which is the more probable estimate of the two. But we cannot impress too strongly upon all writers of history, the necessity of minute explicitness on all such points as these.

Of the private wealth of the Venetians we have a fuller and more satisfactory account.

The mansions, which studded the Grand Canal and other leading thoroughfares, fetched enormous sums. The possessor of a fortune which certainly did not exceed 150,000 ducats, Francesco Foscari, was accounted, relatively speaking, a needy man; and his expensive habits and large family conspired to make him still poorer: yet the palace, in

'We have, in fact, understated our case, for in the year 1450 the ducat equalled not three but six smaller lire. The gold ducat between fourteen and fifteen shillings.