utsche Meilen bis London, in solcher Geschwindigkeit
endigten, dass wir auf dem ganzen Wege kaum 6 Stunden gefahren
sind; so schnell gehen die englischen Pferde; aber auch so schoen
sind die englischen Wege." _Der Leitungen des Hoechsten_, &c. Zw.
Theil. Halle, 1772, p.62.

* * * * *

SANUTO'S DOGES OF VENICE.

Mr. Editor,--Among the well-wishers to your projected periodical,
as a medium of literary communication, no one would be more ready
to contribute to it than myself, did the leisure I enjoy permit me
often to do so. I have been a maker of _Notes and Queries_ for above
twenty-five years, and perhaps should feel more inclined to trouble
you with the latter than the former, in the hope of clearing up some
of the many obscure points in your history, biography, and poetical
literature, which have occurred to me in the course of my reading. At
present, as a very inadequate specimen of what I once designed to call
_Leisure Moments_, I beg to copy the following Note from one of my
scrap-books:--

In the year 1420, the Florentines sent an embassy to the state of
Venice, to solicit them to unite in a league against the ambitious
progress of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan; and the historian
Daru, in his _Histoire de Venise_, 8vo., Paris, 1821, has fallen into
more than one error in his account of the transaction. Marino Sanuto,
who wrote the lives of the Doges of Venice in 1493 (Daru says,
erroneously, some fifty years afterwards), has preserved the Orations
made by the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, in opposition to the Florentine
proposals; which he copied, according to his statement, from a
manuscript that belonged to the Doge himself. Daru states, that the
MS. was communicated to him by the Doge; but that could not be, since
the Doge died in 1423, and Sanuto was not born till 1466. An abridged
translation of these Orations is given in the _Histoire de Venise_,
tom. ii, pp. 289-311.; and in the first of these, pronounced in
January, 1420 (1421, Daru), he is made to say, in reference to an
ambassador sent by the Florentines to the Duke of Milan, in 1414, as
follows: "L'ambassadeur fut _un Juif_, nomme Valori, banquier de sa
profession,", p. 291. As a commentary on this passage, Daru subjoins
a note from the Abbe Laugier, who, in his _Histoire de Venise_, liv.
21., remarks, 1. That it appears strange the Florentines should
have {36} chose a _Jew_ as an ambassador; 2. That