which the Doge lived before his accession to power, and also for a few days in October, 1457, after his retirement, cost him 20,000 ducats. A large number of residences on or near the Rialto were estimated at 10,000 and 15,000 ducats, and 5,000 or 6,000 ducats was quite an ordinary figure. The house, which was purchased by the Commune so far back as 1348 for Jacopo da Carrara, grandfather of Francesco Novello, cost 5,000 ducats. In 1413, among the rewards of Pandolfo Malatesta, Captain-General of Venice in the Hungarian War, was a dwelling, for which the Procurators of St. Mark's paid 6,000 ducats ;' and in 1429 the Palazzo Giustiniani at San Pantaleone was bought for the Lord of Mantua, ex-Captain-General of the Signory, for the sum of 6,500 ducats. In the same year, the Government, desirous of doing honour to the Waiwode of Albania, a Venetian citizen, procured for him the house of the patrician Nicolo Morosini, at an outlay of only D. 3,000. The prices demanded for shops in the choicer and more fashionable localities at the same time was exorbitant. The smallest counter on the Rialto itself did not let for less than 100 ducats a year, and for the Bell Hotel at the Pescheria, with a frontage of little shops, the Sanudo family received annually 800 ducats. Tenements which, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, used to let for fifteen or twenty ducats, had become in the fifteenth worth, according to their situation and their proximity to the ducal residence, six, eight, ten, or even twelve times as much! In the more sumptuous of the private edifices in and about the Foscari period (1423-57), there were not unfrequently single apartments upon the decoration of which 800, 1,000, or even 2,000 ducats had been expended by the proprietor, principally in gilding, mosaic or other carving, marble, and glass. Of the celebrated Furnaces at Murano the richer classes were munificent patrons; so large was the demand for the article in the metropolis alone, that in all the better neighbourhoods every street had its own glass warehouse, which depended exclusively for support upon the tenants of the few mansions spread along on each side of it.

The famous funding system, which the Dutch borrowed from the Venetians, and the English from the Dutch, sprang up as follows:

In the latter half of the twelfth century, the Government borrowed of half-a-dozen merchants the sum of 150,000 silver marks = £300,000 at least. From this transaction dated their origin the National Debt and the Monte- Vecchio. It was not till twelve or thirteen years later, that a Chamber of Loans (Camera degl' Imprestidi), with its staff of functionaries (Camerlenghi), was called into existence, and that the Funding System was made a branch of the political economy of the State. The confidence which was felt almost universally in the stability and good faith of Venice, encouraged an extensive resort to the MonteVecchio and afterward to the Monte-Nuovo. Foreign princes and capitalists deposited their money in the Funds as the securest investment which could be made; the right to hold Venetian scrip was a privilege

which could not be obtained without legislative sanction; and the sums registered in 1428 represented an aggregate of 9,000,000 ducats of gold, the interest upon which, paid half-yearly at Lady-day and Michaelmas, was 130,000 ducats. The subjoined table shows the fluctuations in the interest paid upon the debt during twelve years from 1386 to 1398.

*

*

*

*

*

The marketable value of the Funds was liable to rapid variations. At one time (1440) they were as low as 181. So far as can be ascertained they were never higher than 59, at which figure they stood during a few months in 1409; but before the end of the year they had sunk to 45. In 1425, they were again at 58. It can scarcely be matter of surprise that the fluctuations were so frequent and so violent, when each ship which entered the Lagoons brought tidings of the prospect of a new war with Milan or Hungary, or a report of a fresh revolution at Genoa or Bologna. Our astonishment must be rather that, at such an epoch and such a cycle of the world, any State should have succeeded even imperfectly in establishing a Funded system, and in imparting to it a moderate degree of equilibrium.

The feudal system exercised but a limited and temporary influence on the community of merchant princes. The spirit of the constitution was diametrically opposed to the formation of a landed interest and the growth of military tenures. In very early times, while some waste lands were to be found even in the limited territory of St. Mark, these were let out to the retainers of the Doge on easy terms, but on a strictly feudal principle. Tenure by knight service prevailed in many of the Venetian dependencies, in Candia for instance, and Corfu, but was wholly unknown to their mistress, whose strength lay not in horses or in riders, but on the waves of which she was the queen, and the commerce which flowed into her ports.

Villeinage, however, was not wholly unknown to the Venetian aristocrats. But it is not on record that the serf was treated with any thing like cruelty or severity. Indeed, the annals of the republic, from her first establishment amid "the dirt and seaweed" of Pope, down to the moment when her latest Doge fainted at the feet of her conqueror, are honourably free from any stain of wanton ferocity. Her rule, if now and then harsh on individuals, was conducted on the most enlightened principles as regarded the public welfare. No popular revolt ever agitated her colonies. No reports of uncultivated farms, or an impoverished peasantry in her home dominions, ever reached the ears of Europe. To the last, Venice

VOL. III.

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shewed herself conscious of the high mission with which Providence had intrusted her, and, in great part, undeserving of the sudden destruction which overthrew her independence.

Notwithstanding her almost exclusively commercial character, Venice shewed herself fully alive to the claims and the importance of agriculture. The farmer experienced from the state every possible stimulus and encouragement. "Drainage by hydraulic pressure, artificial manuring, and other inventions, were patronized and fostered." When the land was poor, the cultivator was exempted from taxes. If his property were injured or destroyed by war, he was sure of a liberal compensation from the public exchequer. His interests were consulted by a law which forbade money-lenders to accept oxen or other beasts of burden as a security for advances. Rivers were made navigable, trading distinctions were removed, and leases were freely granted. word, as Mr Hazlitt sums up

In a

Nothing can be more scandalously untrue than the too generally received notion that, in pursuing her conquests, Venice obeyed merely the instincts of a blind and selfish ambition. The Venetians had in common with their neighbours Italian blood, the Italian name, an Italian soil and sky; but it was a very broad constitutional line which separated them from Rome under the Colonna, or Milan under the Visconti. In social refinement, in moral and intellectual culture, and in general civilization, Venice stood on an unapproachable eminence.

The manner, appearance, and amusements of the Venetians were magnificent rather than gay, as became the lords of such an empire, and the feudal descendants of the Marcelli and Emilii Their dress was rich but sober. A long black or blue gown, with tight sleeves, red stockings, and high leather shoes covering the ankle, was the costume of the men indoors. A loose cloak, lined with ermine or squirrel, and a velvet cap, with a sword-belt of the same material, completed their equipment in the streets. The ladies wore very much the same dress in form, but composed of gayer colours, and adorned with the most costly jewels. Young ladies displayed more of their arms and bosoms than the matrons did; and both used a good deal of pain to relieve the sallowness of their complexions, the result of an indoor and highly artificial life In the portrait of a Venetian lady in evening dress, which we find in Mr. Hazlitt's work, we observe that she wears a very

large turban over hair arranged à l'imperatrice; that she has a very short waist, and wears an outer garment open in front, adorned with enormous hanging sleeves, apparently richly embroidered, and showing the arm nearly as high as the shoulder. She has rather a full face, with an expression of mingled humour and voluptuousness; and is, we should say, from twenty to twentythree years of age.

In manner, the Venetians were refined above their neighbours. They were especially remarkable for the frequency of their ablutions; and forks were in use among all the well-to-do class at a very early period of their history.

The

At

Two meals in the course of the day ordinarily sufficed. The first, called dinner (prandium or pranzo), was taken at or about noon. other, a lighter repast, was taken at an early hour in the evening. the Palace, the dinner was served in the principal hall; and the Doge and his Ministers who resided with him ate in public. His Serenity supped in his own apartments. In Venetian cookery, garlic, onions, and all sorts of spices, were used; eggs were plentiful enough; beans, peas, cabbages, and other kind of vegetables, were well known; and after the first course of meat, wine and confections, of which the ladies were excessively fond, were frequently introduced at the tables of the more affluent. Pigeons and other birds were common. Bologna sausages were even then in vogue. All kinds of game, peacocks, pheasants, partridges, hares, were eaten, either roast or boiled. In fish, salmon, lampreys, eels, and trout, were among the delicacies known at this time.

The evening amusements were varied enough. There was dancing and singing; and for those who did not dance or sing there was instrumental music, and for such as did not care for the viol, or the guitar, or the cittern, there was a chess-table. To many of the pastimes by which the wealthier Italians beguiled their leisure, a nation of islanders was necessarily to some extent a stranger; nor is it known that the Venetians were partial to the winter diversion of snow-balling the ladies, which was so much in vogue on the Terra-Ferma. But convivial meetings, concerts, and serenades were soon introduced into the Republic. The musical instruments chiefly preferred came from Germany. In the words of the old Sienese poet, Fulgore da San Geminiano, who admirably paints in his sonnets the life of his day,.

"Canta, danza alla provenzalesca

Con instrumenti novi d'Alemagna."

In the latter part of the thirteenth century, Bartolomeo Giorgio, a Venetian, naturalized the Provençal song, and created a notable reform in Venetian poetry, which had hitherto consisted of little more than popular ballads and snatches. San Geminiano relates that in his own town Monday was the day for serenades, and Wednesday for receptions and balls.

The aspect of the city in the zenith of its glory must have beensplendid and picturesque in the extreme. It was, says Mr. Hazlitt, the Goshen of Italy. Pilgrims, merchants, ambassadors, were constantly arriving at the great central station on the Eastern route. The products of every clime, the costume of every nation, glittered on her quays and in her dockyards. English merchants already rendered emulous of so fair and flourishing a commerce, and English envoys charged by the liberal and farsighted Plantagenets with messages of good-will and proposals of intercourse to the great maritime republic; Greek and Frenchman, Turk, Egyptian, and Syrian, the heavy-browed German, and the sparkling Florentine; all met together in that vast emporium of riches, and paid their court to that subtle and sagacious aristocracy. The constant recurrence of fairs and festivals threw an air of gaiety over the otherwise too serious avocations of the thronging thousands. The Venetian hotels were famous throughout Europe. The shops blazed with every newest invention for either luxury or ornament; glass, bronze, and jewels, velvet and cloth of gold dazzled the eyes of the northern visitor; and even strangers from other parts of Italy carried back word to their countrymen, that the Venetian houses were not "like the dwellings of citizens, but like the palaces of kings and princes." The Venice in fact of the fifteenth, was the London and Paris of the nineteenth, century combined.

Mr. Hazlitt has left us so rich a piece of word-painting, descriptive of the general appearance of the city, that we here insert it entire.

Let the mind's eye conceive a ruder Amsterdam, a city permeated by canals, and divided into deep water-streets of low wooden tenements, interspersed, even somewhat thickly in the leading thoroughfares, with dwellings of greater pretension built on a better model and of a more durable material, and studded in every quarter with Christian temples for the most part of the plainest architecture, not a few on the other hand possessing considerable beauty of structure, though more remarkable for the richness of their ornamentation than for the regularity of their design. Let us present to our fancy a few hundred lamps fed with olive-oil, distributed through the streets and alleys, commencing at the Sacred Niche at the corner, and renewed at each third or fourth door, shedding over the surrounding space a light, a little more powerful indeed but far less. brilliant, than that which is emitted by the glow