restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the
annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be
ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of
law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was
subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears
usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every
instance in which private passion sought its gratification through
public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence,
that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless
forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than
that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only
[Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,--Pax
e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy
were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked
battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank
under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed
with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of
lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are
no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack
of a foreign enemy.]

SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I
would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which
the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which
the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true
connection with the history of the state.