displeasures, and to make such researches into the history of her Commerce
as should furnish me forth material for a report worthy of the high place
Venice held in my reverence.

Indeed, it seemed to be by a sort of anachronism that I had ever mentioned
contemporary Venetian Commerce; and I turned with exultation from the
phantom transactions of the present to that solid and magnificent
prosperity of the past, of which the long-enduring foundations were laid
in the earliest Christian times. For the new cities formed by the
fugitives from barbarian invasion of the main-land, during the fifth
century, had hardly settled around a common democratic government on the
islands of the lagoons, when they began to develop maritime energies and
resources; and long before this government was finally established at
Rialto, (the ancient sea-port of Padua,) or Venice had become the capital
of the young Republic, the Veneti had thriftily begun to turn the wild
invaders of the main-land to account, to traffic with them, and to make
treaties of commerce with their rulers. Theodoric, the king of the Goths,
had fixed his capital at Ravenna, in the sixth century, and would have
been glad to introduce Italian civilization among his people; but this
warlike race were not prepared to practice the useful arts, and although
they inhabited one of the most fruitful parts of Italy, with ample borders
of sea, they were neither sailors nor tillers of the ground. The Venetians
supplied them (at a fine profit, no doubt,) with the salt made in the
lagoons, and with wines brought from Istria. The Goths viewed with
especial amazement their skill in the management of their river-craft, by
means of which the dauntless traders ascended the shallowest streams to
penetrate the main-land, "running on the grass of the meadows, and between
the stalks of the harvest field,"--just as in this day our own western
steamers are known to run in a heavy dew.