I. THE QUARRY 23

a people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live nobly or to perish:-for a thousand years they fought for life; for three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their call was heard.

§ 7. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king, sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her: the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress, impatient of dishonour; and what was the true reason of the change from the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into prison,¹ to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to sign covenant with Death.*

§ 8. On this collateral question I wish the reader’s mind to be fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion.²

* The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)

¹ [The allusion is to Vittor Pisani (above referred to, § 5); he had been cast into prison, after the battle of Pola (1379), in which, through no fault of his, the Venetian fleet had been completely routed by the Genoese. When in the further stress of war a popular cry arose for his services, Pisani was released. “I endured my imprisonment,” he said, “without a murmur; now that I have regained my liberty, my whole existence is dedicated to my country.” It was on the 12th of May, 1797, that the Great Council accepted a new form of government at the hands of General Bonaparte.]

² [In one MS. draft of this chapter is the following passage:-

“There is no cause to seek any other than this surface reason for the strength of Venice-or for her fate. We are not called upon to weigh her responsibilities or count her crimes: we have only to watch the courses of her former and her latter life, and to compare her youth in pursuit of power with her age in pursuit of pleasure. She sought both with the same avidity, and presents to us the simplest and most easily read of all the examples which are furnished by history.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]