nances, overruled the
constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the
popular element from all voice in public affairs, and
finally reduced the nominal prince--the doge--to a mere
puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head of
the state."

At the time when Falieri entered upon his dogeship the city
in all quarters was pervaded by the spies of this great
oligarchy, which seized and imprisoned citizens, and even
put them to death, secretly, without itself being answerable
to any authority. The most notable event in the annals of
this extraordinary Venetian government is that which forms
the story of Marino Falieri himself. His conspiracy with the
plebeians to assassinate the oligarchs and make himself
actual ruler of the state had the double motive of a
personal grievance and the sense of a political wrong.

The fate of this old man has been made the subject of
tragedies by Byron (1820), Casimir Delavigne (1829), and
Swinburne (1885). The novel, _Doge und Dogaressa_, by Ernst
Theodor Hoffmann, was inspired by the same dramatic figure.
Of historical accounts, the following--in Mrs. Oliphant's
best manner--is justly regarded as the most impressive which
has hitherto appeared in English.

Marino Falieri had been an active servant of Venice through a long life.
He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her
nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in
that position of _proveditore_, omnipotent civilian critic of all the
movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic.
He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was
serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his
election reached him.

It is thus evident that Falieri was not a man used to the position of a
lay figure, although at seventy-six the dignified retirement of a
throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not
inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent.
It is told of him that, after waiting long for a bishop to head a
procession at Treviso where he was _podesta_ ("chief magistrate"), he
astonished the tardy prelate by a box on the ear when he finally
appeared, a punishment for keeping the authorities waiting.

Old age to a statesman, however, is in many cases an advantage rather
than a defect, and Falieri was young in vigor and character