ibute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.[14]
The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
theirs to avoid.

Sec. XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing
it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when
contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the
restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill
the annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should
sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under
the mask of law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian
spirit was subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy
appears usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for
every instance in which private passion sought its gratification
through public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed
to the public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with
reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a
branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was
other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower
only: from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of
Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with
forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice
never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were
wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves
of lilies.[15]

Sec. XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general
interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next
endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the
testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the
arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connexion
with the history of the state.

1st. Receive the witness of Painting.

It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
as far back as 1418.

Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close th