ected by the
flight. So far were they from being severed from Rome, so far from
entertaining any dreams of starting afresh in the "new democracy" which
exists in the imagination of Daru and his followers, that the one boast
of their annalists is that they are more Roman than the Romans
themselves. Their nobles looked with contempt on the barbaric blood
which had tainted that of the Colonnas or the Orsini, nor did any
Isaurian peasant ever break the Roman line of Doges as Leo broke the
line of Roman Emperors. Venice--as she proudly styled herself in after
time--was "the legitimate daughter of Rome." The strip of sea-board from
the Brenta to the Isonzo was the one spot in the Empire from the Caspian
to the Atlantic where foot of barbarian never trod. And as it rose, so
it set. From that older world of which it was a part the history of
Venice stretched on to the French Revolution untouched by Teutonic
influences. The old Roman life which became strange even to the Capitol
lingered unaltered, unimpaired, beside the palace of the duke. The
strange ducal cap, the red ducal slippers, the fan of bright feathers
borne before the ducal chair, all came unchanged from ages when they
were the distinctions of every great officer of the Imperial State. It
is startling to think that almost within the memory of living men Venice
brought Rome--the Rome of Ambrose and Theodosius--to the very doors of
the Western world; that the living and unchanged tradition of the Empire
passed away only with the last of the Doges. Only on the tomb of Manin
could men write truthfully, "Hic jacet ultimus Romanorum."

It is this simple continuance of the old social organization which the
barbarians elsewhere overthrew that explains the peculiar character of
the Venetian patriciate. In all other countries of the West the new
feudal aristocracy sprang from the Teutonic invaders. In Italy itself
the nobles were descendants of Lombard conquerors, or of the barons who
followed Emperor after Emperor across the Alps. Even when their names
and characters had alike been moulded into Southern form, the "Seven
Houses" of Pisa boasted of their descent from the seven barons of
Emperor Otto. But the older genealogies of the senators whose names
stood written in the Golden Book of Venice ran, truly or falsely, not to
Teutonic but to Roman origins. The Participazii, the Dandoli, the
Falieri, the Foscari, told of the flight of their Roman fathers before
the barbarian swor