haps, in
the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a
clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian
character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the
true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from
the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.

Sec. III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so during
a period less than the half of her existence, and that including the days
of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing severe
examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the change in
the form of her government, or altogether, as assuredly in great part,
to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.

The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
Rialto,[1] to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of
Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this
period, Two Hundred and Seventy-six[2] years were passed in a nominal
subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an
agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been
entrusted to tribunes,[3] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the
principal islands. For six hundred years,[4] during which the power of
Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective
monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.

Sec. IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the Venetian
state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred,
the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what
was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and
absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
doge on the o