sign covenant with Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of
their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)]

SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be
both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
religion.

I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
of her own private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By