CHAPTER IV

ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER

41. THE history of Venice divides itself, with more sharpness than any other I have read, into periods of distinct tendency and character; marked, in their transition, by phenomena no less definite than those of the putting forth the leaves, or setting of the fruit, in a plant;-and as definitely connected by one vitally progressive organization, of which the energy must be studied in its constancy, while its results are classed in grouped system.

If we rightly trace the order, and estimate the duration, of such periods, we understand the life, whether of an organized being, or a state. But not to know the time when the seed is ripe, or the soul mature, is to misunderstand the total creature.

In the history of great multitudes, these changes of their spirit, and regenerations (for they are nothing less) of their physical power, take place through so subtle gradations of declining and dawning thought, that the effort to distinguish them seems arbitrary, like separating the belts of a rainbow’s colour by firmly drawn lines. But, at Venice, the lines are drawn for us by her own hand; and the changes in her temper are indicated by parallel modifications of her policy and constitution, to which historians have always attributed, as to efficient causes, the national fortunes of which they are only the signs and limitation.¹

42. In this history, the reader will find little importance attached to these external phenomena of political constitution; except as labels, or, it may be, securing seals, of the

¹ [Compare Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. pp. 18 n., 22).]

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