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The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt
page 55 of 461 (11%)
enemy, excited the admiration of other States.

Public institutions of every kind found in Venice their pattern; the
pensioning of retired servants was carried out systematically, and
included a provision for widows and orphans. Wealth, political
security, and acquaintance with other countries, had matured the
understanding of such questions. These slender fair- haired men, with
quiet cautious steps and deliberate speech, differed but slightly in
costume and bearing from one another; ornaments, especially pearls,
were reserved for the women and girls. At that time the general
prosperity, notwithstanding the losses sustained from the Turks, was
still dazzling; the stores of energy which the city possessed, and the
prejudice in its favour diffused throughout Europe, enabled it at a
much later time to survive the heavy blows inflicted upon it by the
discovery of the sea route to the Indies, by the fall of the Mamelukes
in Egypt, and by the war of the League of Cambrai.

Sabellico, born in the neighbourhood of Tivoli, and accustomed to the
frank loquacity of the scholars of his day, remarks elsewhere with some
astonishment, that the young nobles who came of a morning to hear his
lectures could not be prevailed upon to enter into political
discussions: 'When I ask them what people think, say, and expect about
this or that movement in Italy, they all answer with one voice that
they know nothing about the matter.' Still, in spite of the strict
imposition of the State, much was to be learned from the more corrupt
members of the aristocracy by those who were willing to pay enough for
it. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century there were traitors
among the highest officials; the popes, the Italian princes, and even
the second-rate Condottieri in the service of the government had
informers in their pay, sometimes with regular salaries; things went so
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