became again more settled her commerce found always a
wider range. The bridge built from the largest of the islands to the
opposite bank became the "Rialto," or famous exchange of Venice, whose
transactions reached farther, and assumed a more consolidated form, than
had been known before. There it was where the first public bank was
organized; that bills of exchange were first negotiated, and funded debt
became transferable; that finance became a science and book-keeping an
art. Nor must the effect of the example of Venice on other cities of
Italy be left out of account. Genoa, following her steps, rose into
great prosperity and power at the foot of the Maritime Alps, and became
her rival, and finally her enemy. Naples, Gaeta, Florence, many other
towns of Italy, and Rome herself, long after her fall, were encouraged
to struggle for the preservation of their municipal freedom, and to
foster trade, arts and navigation, by the brilliant success set before
them on the Adriatic; but Venice, from the early start she had made, and
her command of the sea, had the commercial pre-eminence.

The middle ages.

The state of things which arose on the collapse of the Roman empire
presents two concurrent facts, deeply affecting the course of trade--(1)
the ancient seats of industry and civilization were undergoing constant
decay, while (2) the energetic races of Europe were rising into more
civilized forms and manifold vigour and copiousness of life. The fall of
the Eastern division of the empire prolonged the effect of the fall of
the Western empire; and the advance of the Saracens over Asia Minor,
Syria, Greece, Egypt, over Cyprus and other possessions of Venice in the
Mediterranean, over the richest provinces of Spain, and finally across
the Hellespont into the Danubian provinces of Europe, was a new
irruption of barbarians from another point of the compass, and revived
the calamities and disorders inflicted by the successive invasions of
Goths, Huns and other Northern tribes. For more than ten centuries the
naked power of the sword was vivid and terrible as flashes of lightning
over all the seats of commerce, whether of ancient or more modern
origin. The feudal system of Europe, in organizing the open country
under military leaders and defenders subordinated in possession and
service under a legal system to each other and to the sovereign power,
must have been well adapted to the necessity of the times in which it
spread so r