the Venetian Republic, for the mines of Mexico and Potosi had _no_
bottom.--Strange! if all these precious stones, metals, &c. have been
all spent since then, and nothing left except a few relics of no
intrinsic value.

It is well enough known, that in the year 1450, one of the natives of
the island of Candia, who have never been men of much character, made a
sort of mine, or airshaft, or rather perhaps a burrow, like those
constructed by rabbits, down which he went and got quite under the
church, stealing out gems, money, &c. to a vast amount; but being
discovered by the treachery of his companion, was caught and hanged
between the two columns that face the sea on the Piazzetta.

It strikes a person who has lived some months in other parts of Italy,
to see so very few clergymen at Venice, and none hardly who have much
the look or air of a man of fashion. Milan, though such heavy complaints
are daily made there of encroachments on church power and depredations
on church opulence, still swarms with ecclesiastics; and in an assembly
of thirty people, there are never fewer than ten or twelve at the very
least. But here it should seem as if the political cry of _fuori i
preti_[Footnote: Out with the clergy.], which is said loudly in the
council-chamber before any vote is suffered to pass into a law, were
carried in the conversation rooms too, for a priest is here less
frequent than a clergyman at London; and those one sees about, are
almost all ordinary men, decent and humble in their appearance, of a
bashful distant carriage, like the parson of the parish in North Wales,
or _le curé du village_ in the South of France; and seems no way related
to an _Abate of Milan or Turin_ still less to _Monsieur l' Abbé at
Paris_.