s of territory
were made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace,
significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at
Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first
of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk; in the
same year was established the Inquisition of State, and from this
period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under
which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion
spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of
Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the
decline of the Venetian power; 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....

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 saviors among those whom she had cast
into prison to that when the voices of her own children commanded her
to sign covenant with death....

The most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of
religion in private life and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the
enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Europe,
Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked statue; her coldness
impenetrable, her exertion only aroused by the touch of a secret
spring. That spring was her commercial interest--this the one motive
of all her important political acts, or enduring national animosities.
She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her
commerce; she calculated the glory of her conquests by their value,
and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame of success
remains when the motives of attempts are forgotten; and the casual
reader of her history may perhaps be surprized to be reminded that the
expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her princes, and
whose results added mo