ise 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, 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 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
intrusted to tribunes, chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the
principal islands. For six hundred years, 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.

"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
other. Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with
the most interesting spectable of a people struggling out of anarchy
into order and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the
worthiest and noblest man whom they could find among them, called their
Doge or Leader, with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming
itself around him, out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an
aristocracy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and
wealth, of some among the families of the fugitives from the older
Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into
a sep