tects, and a place of pilgrimage to all lovers of the arts; and
there are here innumerable _studios_ of painters and sculptors. Roman
art seems to have received a new impulse. The academy of San Luca was
established solely for the art of painting. There are also many literary
institutions in the city.

THE FOUNDATION OF VENICE.

It is recorded in the archives of Padua, says Milizia, that when
Rhadagasius entered Italy, and the cruelties exercised by the Visigoths
obliged the people to seek refuge in various places, an architect of
Candia, named Eutinopus, was the first to retire to the fens of the
Adriatic, where he built a house, which remained the only one there for
several years. At length, when Alaric continued to desolate the country,
others sought an asylum in the same marshes, and built twenty-four
houses, which formed the germ of Venice. The security of the place now
induced people to settle there rapidly, and Venice soon sprung up a city
and gradually rose to be mistress of the seas. The Venetian historians
inform us that the house of Eutinopus, during a dreadful conflagration,
was miraculously saved by a shower of rain, at the prayer of the
architect, who made a vow to convert it into a church; he did this, and
dedicated it to St. James, the magistrates and inhabitants contributing
to build and ornament the edifice. The church is still standing, in the
quarter of the Rialto, which is universally considered the oldest part
of Venice.

THEODORIC THE GREAT, AND HIS LOVE OF THE FINE ARTS.

Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and afterwards also king of Italy,
was born at Amali, near Vienna, in 455, and died in 526. Though a Goth,
he was so far from delighting in the destruction of public monuments,
and works of art, that he issued edicts for their preservation at Rome
and throughout Italy, and assigned revenues for the repair of the public
edifices, for which purpose he employed the most skillful and learned
architects, particularly Aloisius, Boetius, and Symmachus. According to
Cassiodorus (lib. ii. Varior. Epist. xxxix.), Theodoric said: "It is
glorious to preserve the works of antiquity; and it is our duty to
restore the most useful and the most beautiful." Symmachus had the
direction of the buildings constructed or rebuilt at Rome. The king thus
wrote to him: "You have constructed fine edifices; you have, moreover,
disposed of them with so much wisdom that they equal those of antiquity,
and