that the reform was advantageous. In a small community like that of Venice, the existence of a royal house constituted a fatal schism in the very heart of the governing classes. It made two parties of what should only have been one; and always carried within itself the possibility of turning the populace into arbitrators between the crown and the nobility. It was only, however, by very gradual steps that the Venetian constitution assumed its latest proportions. After the change above recorded, two great evils, in the opinions of the aristocracy, still remained to be remedied. Although the chief magistrate had now become elective, no change had been made in the powers which he wielded; and these were so loosely defined as to afford to any enterprising Doge a pretext for the most arbitrary exertions of prerogative. In the second place, the only deliberative assembly as yet known to the constitution was the old Arrengo, or general open air council of the entire people, a mode of consulting public opinion compatible only with the lowest civilisation, and most elementary systems of government. Accordingly, in the year 1172, a further reform was introduced, which contained within itself the germs of the future oligarchy. The Arrengo was not abolished; it was merely, like the tiers état of France, discontinued, on the understanding that it would still be convoked on emergencies of unusual gravity. A substitute for it was obtained by dividing the city into six wards, each of which was to elect two representatives, who in turn were to select from their respective wards forty citizens. These six representative bodies, of forty members each, when thrown together formed the legislative assembly of four hundred and eighty. These were elected annually. The Doge, on the other hand, found his independence circumscribed by a body of six privy councillors chosen from the six wards, without whose consent none of his acts hal any legal authority. Their term of office expired with the Doge's life. Interposed between the quasi popular and quasi royal institutions, was a senate of sixty members chosen out of the deliberative assembly. According to the theory on which the latter body was established, its members were restricted by no limitations of age, property, or rank. Virtually, of course, a majority would be chosen from the nobility, as the wealthiest and

most influential class in every ward. And here we see one very obvious reason why the Venetian aristocracy maintained their ascendency so long. They themselves were the active men of the state. Among them were to be found the wealthiest and most enterprising merchants, as well as the ablest captains. There was no division there between noble and roturier, corresponding to that in France, and based upon the distinction between the ownership of land and every other kind of wealth. The nobles dwelt in the city, and were as naturally returned to the legisla tive assembly as the Beckfords and Sawbridges of former days to our own House of Commons. The aristocracy, however, as a class, were not contented that even this mere semblance of popular rights should be continued. It is supposed by many writers that they were influenced by the example of Genoa, where domestic faction was more powerful than patriotism, and was gradually paving the way for the ruin of the Republic. The Venetians might have thought that, as long as even the forms of popular election remained, they were never safe from the same danger. But, whatever their motives, it is apparent that, during the whole of the thirteenth century, they were gradually preparing the population for further changes, which were at length partially accomplished in the year 1298. It was then resolved by a vote of the legislative assembly that its own members should, for the future, be chosen by the forty-one nobles who were charged with the election of the Doge, and that they should be taken, not from the public at large, but from that portion of the existing representatives who had occupied a seat for four years. As these, however, would not furnish a sufficient number, a committee of three was to be appointed out of the forty-one to select other candidates, and these in turn were to be balloted for by the forty in the same way as the others. Thus the election of the assembly was entirely taken out of the hands of the people; and the design of the patricians was finally consummated in 1317, by the celebrated Serrar Del Gran Conseio, by which the Assembly was closed against all families who had not been among the class of nobles for two hundred years. The Council of Ten was established about the same time (1310), merely for a temporary purpose, like the Roman dictatorship. It was afterwards, on various

pretexts, prolonged from time to time, till at length in 1335 itdeclared itself a permanent part of the constitution.

We must now return to the course of the external history of Venice. We have seen that, before the end of the tenth century, she had obtained possession or quasi possession of Dalmatia ; and it was during the succeeding century that the ceremony of the marriage of the Doge with the Adriatic was first instituted. The event which gave rise to this custom was a great victory obtained over the Genoese and German fleet in the year 1177, on which occasion the Pope happened to be on the same side as the Venetians. Moreover, he was at Venice when the victorious fleet returned home, under the command of the Dogé Ziani.

The Pontiff, turning to Ziani, offered him a ring, with these words: "Take this, my son, as a token of the true and perpetual dominion of the ocean, which thou and thy successors shall wed every year on this day of the Ascension, in order that posterity may know that the sea belongs to Venice by the right of conquest, and that she is subject to her, as a bride is to her husband." The Doge accepted the symbol; and it is said that in 1177 was performed, for the first time, that whimsical and pompous ceremony known to the Venetians themselves as the Andata alli Due Castelli, by which the annual marriage of Venice with the Adriatic was celebrated down to a period within the memory of living men.

It was early in the thirteenth century that the Venetians made their first great stride in the way of territorial dominion. In the year 1204 they formed an alliance with France to lay siege to Byzantium, and the result of the expedition, which proved perfectly successful, was, that Venice found herself mistress of a large number of islands in the Grecian Archipelago, and in the Mediterranean. The whole Eastern Empire, in fact, was partitioned between the victorious allies; and though the French in time lost their hold upon the metropolis which again returned to the rule of an imperial dynasty, the Venetians never wholly lost the footing which they then acquired. It is on this very question, however, that we notice the gravest defects in Mr. Hazlitt's volume. His account of the actual territory at any time possessed by the Venetians, is vague and meagre in the extreme. This is a very grave fault, and more especially so in a history intended for Englishmen; as nothing can possibly be more important or more

interesting than to trace the gradual acquisitions of so small a state at the expense of her neighbours, and to observe what extent of conquest she was permanently enabled to hold.

Shortly after this expedition to the East, it was seriously proposed in the Venetian assembly to transfer the seat of empire to Byzantium. The proposal, it appears, was only rejected by one vote, which was afterwards known as "the vote of Providence ;” though it would not be easy to shew that the scheme in question was without many reasons in its favour. In the arguments for and against it which are reproduced by Mr. Hazlitt, the balance is, in our opinion, all in favour of the change. There remains, of course, the sentimental and patriotic reason-the attachment of the Venetians to their native soil; and against that we do not wish to say one word. It is by itself, perhaps, sufficient to outweigh every other. But the more material reasons against migration, adopted by the opposing speakers, are of the weakest description.

It was shortly after this period-i. e., about the middle of the thirteenth century—that the grand competition began between Genoa and Venice, which lasted for nearly a century and a quarter, reminding us rather of the struggles between Athens and Sparta than of any more modern rivalries. Although, however, fortune fluctuated considerably, and the Venetians were continually reduced to the most critical situations, the balance of success remained with them. It was during this period that the republic proclaimed herself sovereign of the Adriatic, and compelled all other seaport towns upon the coast of the Gulf to pay toll to her officials. This right she insisted upon in the teeth of the most formidable opposition, and one by one her enemies were compelled to give way.

So the "wild horses of St. Mark" went on upon their path of glory, their "necks clothed with thunder," right up to the end of the fourteenth century, when Genoa finally sank before the indomitable will and stable government of that superb aristocracy, and Venice had no longer a rival either in the mart or on the wave. The treaty of Turin, however, in 1383, left her exhaustedby a long war, and contented with the conditions of a peace not entirely glorious. But she soon rallied from her prostration, and

became ere long indisputably the arbitress of Italy, and apparently on the highway to become a leading European power. During the next two centuries her influence and splendour reached their culminating point. She fought for thirty years with the Visconti of Milan, and issued triumphant from the contest. But with the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, an enemy appeared upon the scene before whom she was ultimately destined to succumb. Nevertheless, up to the end of the seventeenth century, the republic maintained a struggle with the Ottomans upon equal terms, and succeeding in preserving and even extending her Mediterranean and Grecian conquests. During this period her position in Italy was one which her children may well look back upon with pride. Before the close of the fifteenth century she had acquired the rich island of Cyprus; and, in the first decade of the sixteenth, she signalized herself by her heroic resistance to the league of Cambray, formed against her by France, Spain, Austria, and the Pope. Partly by her valour, and partly by her diplomacy, Venice triumphed over this formidable coalition; and now, as the tide of war was gradually ebbing away from Italy, we find the arms of the republic chiefly exercised against her ancient enemy the Turk, though even with him she remained at peace during the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1571, however, Selim II. succeeded in taking Cyprus, which the republic was never afterwards able to regain; yet in more than a hundred years from this time she had not retrograded, and we find her, in as late as 1699, receiving the whole Morea at the hands of Turkey by the terms of the treaty of Carlowitz.

Venice had now flourished in meridian splendour for at least five hundred years, and in a position of very considerable eminence for nearly a thousand. Her decline was now approaching. The conquest of the Morea was her last great military achievement; and in 1718, it was wrested from her hands once more after a desperate struggle of three years' duration. From this date the policy of the Venetian government began to undergo a change. Strict neutrality, peace, and enjoyment of her well-earned wealth, had succeeded to schemes of aggrandizement. Reposing proudly on her traditions, ruled by an aristocracy which, however selfish and exclusive, was unquestionably wise and temperate,