The wife of Silvester,
Distinguished by Roman virtue,
By Venetian piety,
And by the Ducal crown,
Died 1708."

The writers of this age were generally anxious to make the world aware
that they understood the degrees of comparison, and a large number of
epitaphs are principally constructed with this object (compare, in the
Latin, that of the Bishop of Paphos, given above): but the latter of
these epitaphs is also interesting from its mention, in an age now
altogether given up to the pursuit of worldly honor, of that "Venetian
piety" which once truly distinguished the city from all others; and of
which some form and shadow, remaining still, served to point an epitaph,
and to feed more cunningly and speciously the pride which could not be
satiated with the sumptuousness of the sepulchre.

Sec. LXXXV. Thus far, then, of the second element of the Renaissance
spirit, the Pride of State; nor need we go farther to learn the reason
of the fall of Venice. She was already likened in her thoughts, and was
therefore to be likened in her ruin, to the Virgin of Babylon. The Pride
of State and the Pride of Knowledge were no new passions: the sentence
against them had gone forth from everlasting. "Thou saidst, I shall be a
lady for ever; so that thou didst not lay these things to thine heart ...
_Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee_; and thou hast
said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil
come upon thee ...; thy merchants from thy youth, they shall wander every
one to his quarter; none shall save thee."[21]

Sec. LXXXVI. III. PRIDE OF SYSTEM. I might have illustrated these evil
principles from a thousand other sources, but I have not time to pursue
the subject farther, and must pass to the third element above named, the
Pride of System. It need not detain us so long as either of the others,
for it is at once more palpable and less dangerous. The manner in which
the pride of the fifteenth century corrupted the sources of knowledge,
and diminished the majesty, while it multiplied the trappings, of state,
is in general little observed; but the reader is probably already well
and sufficiently aware of the curious tendency to formulization and
system which, under the name of philosophy, encumbered the minds of the
Renaissance schoolmen. As it was above stated, grammar became the first
of sciences; and whatever subject had to be treated, the first aim of
the p