he decline of the
Venetian power;[8] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of
the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence
of the diminution of her internal strength.

Sec. VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between the
establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
call was heard.

Sec. VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many
periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the
man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
sign covenant with Death.[9]

Sec. VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will
be both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
prosperity was exactly coi