tive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
several characteristics of the temper of our present English
legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of
my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment
of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be
able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.

Sec. XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
the portico of St. Mark's,[13] the central expression in most men's
thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is
true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of
her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service
thus rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years
more than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement
V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the
great tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the
doge or the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo
blotted out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of
ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an
enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and
of her defiance of it.

To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
will attr