she shared their provinces, and joined to her titles that of the mistress of a fourth and a half of the Roman empire. She saw the Eastern empire fall, and the ferocious Mussulmans rise on its ruins She saw the French monarchy give way; and alone, immoveable, this proud Republic contemplated the kingdoms and the nations which passed before her. But after all the rest, she sank in her turn, and the state which linked the present to the past, and joined the two epochs of the civilization of the universe, has ceased to exist."

THE LAGOON.

THAT part of the Mediterranean which washes the eastern coast of Italy, is called the Adriatic Sea, or Gulf. Its upper, or northern portion, receives all the waters which flow from the southern declivities of the Alps. These streams are numerous; they discharge themselves in close succession along a line which equals thirty leagues in length, and which comprises the north-western corner of the Adriatic, and nearly the whole of its northern coast. The southernmost river is the Po, which comes charged with waters from both the Alps and the Apennines; the northernmost, or rather the most easterly, is the Lisonzo, which has its origin in the mountains of Carniola. The most considerable of the many streams which the Gulf receives between these extreme points, are the Adige, the Brenta, the Musone, the Piave, the Livenza, the Lemene, and the Tagliamento. Every one of these rivers has a rapid course, and brings down, especially in the rainy season, enormous quantities of mud and sand, which, as soon as they reach the sea, and are released from the violence of the stream, are quietly deposited. The head of the Adriatic has thus become a bed of soft mud, extending between twenty and thirty miles from the shore, and covered with water, not exceeding, for the most part, one or two feet in depth. This immense expanse, which cannot justly be considered as either sea or land, is called the Laguna, or, as we say, the Lagoon; it is navigable throughout only by skiffs, drawing a few inches of water; but wherever the rivers have cut a few channels for their passage, or artificial canals have been excavated, ships of considerable burden may ride securely. The Lagoon is not open to the sea; its outer edge is embanked by a succession of long, narrow, sandy islands, or slips of land, which serve as so many natural breakwaters, and form, in fact, an impregnable rampart against the waves of the Adriatic. The entrances through this outer barrier are few, and the subsequent navigation through the calm still waters of the Lagoon most intricate and difficult; so that much skill, and a long acquaintance with the windings of the deeper channels, are necessary for a safe pilotage through the labyrinth which they present.

The face of the Lagoon, which we have just described, is sprinkled with a number of small islands, whose soil is of a firmer character than that of the shoals and mud-banks above which they are elevated; some are clustered together, with only narrow channels between them, and others are scattered remotely, as so many outposts." It is upon a group which lies at the point where the western and the northern coasts of the Adriatic meet, that the city of Venice stands.

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Our readers will thus see, that the Venetian Lagoon is, in point of fact, what Mr. Rose calls it, a great mud estuary. That gentleman likens it, in its relation to the Adriatic, to a side-closet, shut off from a room by a partition, but communicating with it by doors. The embankment, or bulwark, which protects the Lagoon from the inroads of the waves, is the partition, the openings in it are the doors, and in a line with them, though not uniformly straight, are the passages, or channels, which bring ships to Venice. These openings, of course, break up the embankment, or partition, into certain compartments, which comprise (beginning from the north) a long spit of land on the side of the territory of Treviso, divided from the continent by backwaters, estuaries, and canals, the island of St. Erasmus, that styled the Lido (literally" the beach,") or the Lido di Palestrina, and, lastly, the artificial barrier, known by the name of the Murazzi, which are massive walls built on shoals, running from near the Lido to the port of Chioggia, not far above the mouth of the Adige. The Murazzi are, properly speaking, of modern creation; but previously to their construction, out-works existed of a similar, though less permanent description.

With the old government of Venice, it was an object of particular care to keep these artificial barriers in a perfect

state; but from the testimony of modern travellers we infer, that the same anxiety has not been evinced by the guardians of the city since it has been under the Austrian rule. Mr. Rose tells us that some time ago a rent was made in the Murazzi which might have been repaired for a trifling sum of money if it had been attended to in time; but there were representations to be made to Vienna, and resolutions and counter-resolutions to be adopted. In the mean time the breach was increasing; and a heavy sea and high tide having laid the Place of St. Mark under water, it was at last held advisable to stop the leak. "I need scarcely add," says our authority, "that this operation now cost ten times the sum which would have sufficed in the beginning."

THE ORIGIN OF VENICE.

In ancient geography the name Venetia was applied to a large district which lay to the north of the Adriatic, and which constituted, according to the division of Augustus, the tenth division of the Roman empire. Before the irruption of the Barbarians into Italy, fifty cities are said to have flourished in peace and prosperity within the limits of this province; the chief among them were Padua, im portant for its wealth and its ancient renown,-and Aquileia, which was once the great bulwark of Italy on its northeastern frontier, and in the time of the geographer Strabo, the great emporium of the Illyrian trade. Their tranquillity was disturbed by Alaric and his Goths in the year 452; and according to the common supposition, a number of refugees from the conquered province, sought shelter in the small islands of the Venetian Gulf. Fifty years afterwards, the inroads of Attila and the Huns gave rise to a second and more extensive emigration; the citizens of Aquileia then betook themselves to the isle of Gradus, (or as we now call it Grado,) near the mouth of the Lisonzo, while those of Padua retreated to the Rivus Altus, on which the city of Venice subsequently arose. Thus, as the poet says,

A few in fear

Flying away from him, whose boast it was

That the grass grew not where his horse had trod,
Gave birth to Venice,-

and the savage conqueror, who so well displayed his ferocious pride in that memorable saying, was undesignedly the instrument of founding a republic which revived in the feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial industry.

The condition of the islanders about seventy years afterwards, is described in a letter addressed to their "maritime tribunes" by Cassiodorus the minister, or Prætorian præfect, of Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy. The writer quaintly compares them to water-fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the waves, an image which is re peated by a poet of our own, when he says that,— Like the water-fowl

They built their nests among the ocean-waves.

The Præfect allows that the province of Venetia had formerly contained many noble families; but he insinuates that they were now reduced by misfortune to the same level of humble poverty. Fish was the common food of all; and their only treasure was the salt which they extracted from the sea, and exchanged in the neighbouring markets of the continent. Want, however, had begotten enterprise; the exiles had already become familiar with the dangers of the sea, and their vessels, continually increasing in size and number, visited all the harbours of the Adriatic. The extent of their maritime means may be generally inferred from the request which the epistle of Cassiodorus conveys; he exhorts the tribunes in a mild tone of authority to animate the zeal of their countrymen for the public service, which required their assistance to transport the magazines of wine and oil from the province of Istria to the royal city of Ravenna.

ITS RISE AND GREATNESS.

THE tribunes to whom the letter of Cassiodorus was addressed, are supposed to have been twelve officers annually elected in the twelve principal islands; they were

*The literal meaning of these Latin words is "deep stream;" their Italian form is Rivo Alto, which has been abbreviated into Rialto, a name almost as celebrated as that of Venice itself. As we apply it indiscriminately to three different objects, its various significations may be here explained. It is, in the first place, the name of the island just mentioned, the Isola di Rialto; secondly, with a neighbouring one; and lastly, of the Exchange, the Rialto of the bridge styled Il Ponte di Rialto, which connects that island of Shakspeare, which stands upon the same island.

superseded in 697 by a chief called a Duke, or Doge, who was chosen by the general assembly of the people, for life, and endowed with almost unlimited patronage and prerogatives. Under this form of government, which has been styled a loose mixture of monarchy and democracy, the Venetians suffered much from domestic troubles; the authority of the Doge was respected so long as he was popular and successful, but the caprices of a fickle multitude always exposed him to the chances of a violent death. "It is a remarkable fact," says Mr. Roscoe, "that out of the first fifty doges of Venice, five abdicated, five were banished with their eyes put out, five were massacred and nine deposed;" the Turkish Sultans themselves have scarcely experienced a worse fate. In 1172 a great council was established, which gradually engrossed the management of affairs; little more than a century afterwards this body was made hereditary, and Venice then became subject to a close aristocracy. A conspiracy in 1310, to restore the ancient form of government, gave rise to the appointment of a temporary tribunal, from which sprung the permanent institution of the "Council of Ten," a severe and despotic oligarchy. To this was afterwards added the terrible Inquisition of State, which watched over the chief interests of the Republic, and exercised absolute dominion over the lives and fortunes of its citizens. "Of all forms of. government" says a modern traveller (Simond), “that of Venice seems to have been the very worst; yet it was lasting; it was glorious; the people were happy, and a multitude of great men flourished under it during twelve centuries."

In the earlier periods of their history, the Venetians had to struggle with many difficulties. Their infant commerce was grievously oppressed by the pirates which everywhere infested the coast of the Adriatic; and even in the shelter of their Lagoon, the frugal merchants were not free from the inroads of those lawless wanderers. But their strength grew with the dangers which they had to encounter; and in 804, when attacked by Pepin, the son of Charlemagne, they employed large ships of war in their defence, and repulsed the invaders. In the following century they had square-rigged vessels with three masts, and of so large a burden as from 1200 to 2000 tons; and they carried on an extensive and lucrative trade with the sovereign princes and states of Italy, Germany, Greece, and Egypt. Power followed in the train of commerce; and from a merchant, Venice became, like our own East India Company, a conqueror. Her policy was ambitious, but her ambition was regulated by prudence; by degrees, her factories were con verted into fortresses, and she rendered herself, by conquest or treaty, the mistress of many towns and ports of Dalmatia, Albania, and the Morea. The riches of her citizens increased with the increasing demand of Europe: "their manufactures of silk and glass, perhaps the institution of their bank are of high antiquity; and they enjoyed the fruits of their industry in the magnificence of public and private life." In the latter part of the twelfth century, Venice united with the Pope, Alexander the Third, and the Greek Emperor, in defending the republics of Lombardy against the German Emperor Frederic Barbarossa; and the services which on this occasion she rendered to the Pontiff, led him, in testimony of his gratitude, to confer upon the Republic the sovereignty of the Adriatic. This gave rise to the singular and splendid ceremony of the Doge's marrying the Sea, on the annual feast of the Ascension, and throwing into it his ring as a symbol of their espousals.

The share which Venice took in the capture of Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth century, added largely to her wealth and political importance; and the extension of her conquests over a considerable part of the adjoining continent of Italy raised her for a time to a still higher eminence. In spite of the fierce struggle which she had to maintain with the rival Republic of Genoa, a struggle which threatened at one time to annihilate the trade and even the political existence of Venice, she continued to adance till she reached the summit of her prosperity and geatness in the fifteenth century. The magnificence and splendour which she then displayed were unequalled; her city had arisen "like an exhalation from the deep," a gorgeous fairy scene,—

A vast metropolis, with glistering spires,
With theatres, basilicas adorned.

"The revenues of the Republic," to use the language of Robertson, " as well as the wealth amassed by individuals, exceeded whatever was elsewhere known. In the magni

ficence of their houses, the richness of furniture, in profusion of plate, and in everything which contributed either towards elegance or parade in their mode of living,-the nobles of Venice surpassed the state of the greatest monarch beyond the Alps. Nor was all this the display of an inconsiderate dissipation; it was the natural consequence of successful industry, which, having accumulated wealth with ease, is entitled to enjoy it in splendour." The same writer tells us, that about the year 1420 the naval force of the republic consisted of 3000 trading-vessels of various dimensions, on board of which were employed 17,000 sailors: of 300 ships of greater force, manned with 8000 sailors: and of 45 large galleasses, or carracks, navigated by 11,000 sailors: while in the arsenals were employed 16,000 artificers.

ITS DECLINE AND CAPTURE BY THE FRENCH IN 1797. In the year 1508, the Pope, the Emperor, the King of France, and the King of Spain, entered into a confederacy known by the name of the league of Cambray, for the purpose of humbling or destroying the power of Venice. The Republic escaped, with some losses, and had soon afterwards to encounter the rising greatness of the Turks. But the hour of her decline had approached, "Columbus and Vasco de Gama," to quote the words of Mr. Roscoe, "humbled a power which neither popes, princes, nor sultans, could unsettle or overthrow,-their discoveries tore away its pomp and glory, as the diffusion of knowledge in a subsequent age humbled those of Rome." When the rulers of Venice first heard that a passage had been found to India by the Cape of Good Hope, their sagacity at once foresaw the consequences, and already in anticipation they felt their strength departing; they saw themselves shut out from the rich traffic with the Region of the Sun, and "the golden stream turned to enrich another." Before the sixteenth century had closed, the Republic had sunk from her high position among the powers of Europe, into the rank of a secondary state; and while her resources were rapidly diminishing, she had to withstand the powerful enmity of the Turks. In this she succeeded for a long while,-long enough, indeed, to ward off from Christendom the dangers which menaced it at the hands of the infidels, and to entitle the Republic to the proud appellation of "Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite;" but the treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 left her with scarcely more than a fragment of her vast dominions in Eastern Europe. Yet even while thus declining, Venice maintained in some degree her ancient state and splendour; and as her rulers had the wisdom to conceal her weakness under the guise of moderation, she continued to be treated with respect

.... till a tempest shook

All things most held in honour among men,All things the giant with the scythe had spared, To their foundations, and at once she fell.

After

It would have been strange indeed, if a state, worn out and enfeebled as Venice was, had passed safely through the storm which followed the French Revolution. maintaining for some time an unwilling neutrality, and allowing her territories upon the continent of Italy to be repeatedly overrun by Austrians and French in the course of their warfare, she exhibited symptoms which excited the displeasure of Buonaparte. On the 15th of May, 1797, a French force of 5000 or 6000 men crossed the Lagoon in boats, and took possession of the city without a shadow of resistance on the part of the Venetians; and on the same day the rulers of Venice, self-deposed, pronounced the dissolution of its ancient government, and the instalment of a democratic municipality, which, they seriously declared, was to give the last degree of perfection to the Republican system of government, so long the glory and happiness of the commonwealth. The French general himself, Baraguay D'Hilliers, was astonished at the facility of the conquest. "The sea-girt metropolis" says Mr. Simond, "might easily have been defended; and the artificers of the arsenal alone, a brave and devoted body of men, would have been abundantly sufficient to man a fleet of small vessels, superior to any which the invaders could assemble; while the rest of the population, although, perhaps, lukewarm only, would have been stimulated to resistance if the example had been thus given them. It was the pusillanimity of the nobles which gave confidence to the party opposed to them. They betrayed themselves into the hands of an enemy, whom they had first provoked by an imprudent dis

play of hatred, and afterwards, when seriously threatened, had encouraged by their submissiveness." Thus fell the celebrated city and Republic of Venice ;

She who had stood yet longer than the last Of the Four Kingdoms,-who, as in an ark, Had floated down amid a thousand wrecks, Uninjured, from the Old World to the New, From the last glimpse of civilized life-to where Light shone again, and with the blaze of noon. The last doge of Venice was Manini; he completed a long list of one hundred and twenty, and had been chosen in the year which gave birth to the French Revolution. The unfortunate city itself, after being despoiled of its pictures and other treasures by its captors, was made over to Austria a few months afterwards by the treaty of Campo Formio. In 1805 it was annexed to the French kingdom of Italy; but in 1814 it passed again under the dominion of Austria.

GENERAL PLAN OF THE CITY.

We have already stated that Venice is built upon a collection of small islands or sand-banks, in the great estuary called the Lagoon; we will now say a few words concerning the arrangement of its parts. The shoals upon which it stands are gathered into two great clusters, divided from each other by a serpentine channel, called the Canalazo, or Grand Canal, but communicating across it by the celebrated bridge of the Rialto. The city may thus be described as separated into two principal portions, each made up of many small islands, and each entirely cut off from the other, except at this bridge. All these little islands themselves, so constituting each of these separate portions, are again connected together by smaller bridges which cross the little channels dividing them from one another. Now, as the islands are numerous, these bridges occur frequently, and as their arches are necessarily high, because they spring from low banks, they present a very steep ascent, which is cut into easy steps for the convenience of passage, so that when taking a walk in Venice, as Mr. Rose says, you are perpetually going up and down stairs. Our readers will thus understand, that each of the two great divisions of the city has all its little fragments well connected by numerous bridges, but that the two divisions themselves have only one point of communication, namely, where they are joined by the Rialto.

These canals are the water-streets of Venice, the thoroughfares by which her citizens usually pass from one district to another. The Canalazo, or Grand Canal, is the main channel of communication,-the High Street, as it were, of the city, sweeping from one end of it to the other, and cutting it into two distinct quarters; the other canals, or rii as they are called, are so many lanes, or smaller streets, branching from the great trunk, and winding into every remote corner of each quarter. Our readers must not, however, suppose that the canals of Venice are her only thoroughfares; like other cities she has streets, though streets such as no other city can show, but still real land streets, narrow, paved, commodious, and noiseless passages," (an unfavourable likeness of Cranbourn-alley and its cognate lanes, as Mr. Rose styles them,) by which you may pass without the aid of a boat from any one point to another, thanks to her multitude of bridges. It is a fault indeed in most descriptions of Venice, that while so much is said of her canals so little is said of her streets; for, though the hoof of a horse, or the rumbling of a wheel, is never heard in these strait avenues," to use the language of another writer "they are of great resort for all the purposes of ordinary intercourse." Besides these streets, or cale as they are termed, there are several open places or squares of small size, which bear the appellation of campi, or fields, though it would be difficult to find a blade of grass in any one of them. Along the banks of the canals there is frequently a sort of wharf or footway, styled a riva; this is usually secured by a parapet, which is bored for a wicket; but the canals more frequently extend close up to the houses, which rise immediately from the water on either side.

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"In forming the riva, or water foundations," says Mr. Rose, "the water is first excluded, as with us in works of a similar description. The first stratum of soil below the bottom of the canals is then thrown out, because this, as being soft alluvial matter, affords no solid foundation, and piles are driven into that beneath it, which appears to have been the original bed of the Lagoon, and on which a mass of mud, or malm, has been accumulated."

THE ENTRANCE INTO VENICE. "Nor a breath of wind ruffled the surface of the shallow sea; and gliding on swiftly, we reached the celebrated city of Venice, but, unfortunately, not the best side of it, in less than one hour from Fusina. A confused heap of very old buildings presented itself, shabbily fine, with pointed windows, half Gothic, half Grecian, out of which dirty beds were thrust for the benefit of air. Half-rotten piles supported blocks of marble, richly carved, serving as landingplaces to these miserable hovels, the walls of which, out of the perpendicular, seemed nodding to each other across the narrow canals. Through one of these we pushed on rapidly, turning several sharp corners in succession from canal to canal, with scarcely any dry communication from house to house. A few gondolas passed us. No noisy trade was heard, no cries, no rattling of carriages of course; not so much as the sound of a footstep disturbed the universal stillness. We might have fancied ourselves in the catacombs of all the fishes of the Adriatic, rather than in a town inhabited by men, but for the few heads that we saw here and there popping out of dark holes to look at us. Emerging at last from the maze of narrow canals, we found ourselves in the great one, which traverses the city in an easy curve, the very line of beauty, and rendered peculiarly striking from the circumstance of most of the buildings on each side being marble palaces. No quays, no terraces, no landing-place before them; they plunge at once into the briny deep, which, however, is here very shallow. Splendid marble stairs, with marble balustrades, lead up at once from the water to the hall-door. There it was that crowds of gondolieri, carrying lighted torches at night, used formerly to draw up, as elsewhere carriages and horses."

Such is the graphic account which Mr. Simond gives us of his entrance into Venice. The direction in which travellers usually approach the city is from Padua, whence the journey to Fusina, a sort of custom-house station on the coast, or rather on the margin of the Lagoon, may be performed either by water upon the Brenta and its canal, or by land upon the high road which runs along-side. The banks of the Brenta have always been the favourite resort of the Venetians during the the heat of Summer and Autumn; and we read much of the palaces and villas with which they were once adorned. The river, however, is but a dull muddy stream, while its banks are flat, and generally destitute of large trees; "the best parts," says Mr. Woods, "resemble perhaps the Thames at Fulham, but the stream is narrower and the houses larger, all of them white, and the trees smaller." Another traveller compares the banks to ditch-dykes, and says that the much-vaunted palaces and villas appeared to have sunk into the stream, "for no such objects could we discern." There is doubtless, however, pretty and fanciful architecture, accompanied by much that is gay and pleasing in the appearance of these Venetian villas, "but all," to use the words of Mr. Rose, "is ugly that is not the immediate creation of man." In proof of this he adduces their situation; the greater part of them have the turnpike-road immediately in front, and between them and the navigable river, while the view of the stream is shut out from the lower windows by a high dyke, which is intended as a security against inundation. But this is not always a sufficient protection, for the houses lie considerably beneath the level of the road, and the road itself is occasionally overflown. Altogether, the journey from Padua is a period of painful suspense, and the traveller congratulates himself when he reaches Fusina, and embarks in a gondola upon The common ferry That trades to Venice.

ITS GENERAL APPEARANCE.

THE general appearance of Venice is very peculiar; its parts may be easily described in detail, but it is difficult to give such a description of the whole scene as shall convey to the mind of one who has never seen it an adequate idea of its strange and singular character. The following is part of one quoted by Mr. Conder in his Italy, and which, he says, has been pronounced by those who have visited the fairy city, to be the most correct and graphic that has appeared.

Venice was always an unintelligible place, and it is still unintelligible. I knew before that it was situated on many islands; that its highways were canals; that gondolas were its hackney-coaches; that it had St. Mark's, and the