commerce of Asia with Europe, and incredibly enriched the Republic. The
vastness and importance of such a trade, even at that day, when the wants
of men were far simpler and fewer than now, could hardly be over-stated;
and one nation then monopolized the traffic which is now free to the whole
world. The Venetians bought their wares at the great marts of Samarcand,
and crossed the country of Tartary in caravans to the shores of the
Caspian Sea, where they set sail and voyaged to the River Volga, which
they ascended to the point of its closest proximity to the Don. Their
goods were then transported overland to the Don, and were again carried by
water down to their mercantile colony at its mouth. Their ships, having
free access to the Black Sea, could, after receiving their cargoes, return
direct to Venice. The products of every country of Asia were carried into
Europe by these dauntless traffickers, who, enlightened and animated by
the travels and discoveries of Matteo, Nicolo, and Marco Polo, penetrated
the remotest regions, and brought away the treasures which the prevalent
fears and superstitions of other nations would have deterred them from
seeking, even if they had possessed the means of access to them.

The partial civilization of the age of chivalry had now reached its
climax, and the class which had felt its refining effects was that best
able to gratify the tastes still unknown to the great mass of the ignorant
and impoverished people. It was a splendid time, and the robber counts and
barons of the continent, newly tamed and Christianized into knights, spent
splendidly, as became magnificent cavaliers serving noble ladies. The
Venetians, who seldom did merely heroic things, who turned the Crusades to
their own account and made money out of the Holy Land, and whom one always
fancies as having a half scorn of the noisy grandeur of chivalry, were
very glad to supply the knights and ladies with the gorgeous stuffs,
precious stones, and costly perfumes of the East; and they now also began
to establish manufactories, and to practice the industrial arts at home.