It is recorded in the archives of Padua, says Milizia, that when Rhadagasius entered Italy, and the cruelties exercised by the Visigoths obliged the people to seek refuge in various places, an architect of Candia, named Eutinopus, was the first to retire to the fens of the Adriatic, where he built a house, which remained the only one there for several years. At length, when Alaric continued to desolate the country, others sought an asylum in the same marshes, and built twenty-four houses, which formed the germ of Venice. The security of the place now induced people to settle there rapidly, and Venice soon sprung up a city and gradually rose to be mistress of the seas. The Venetian historians inform us that the house of Eutinopus, during a dreadful conflagration, was miraculously saved by a shower of rain, at the prayer of the architect, who made a vow to convert it into a church; he did this, and dedicated it to St. James, the magistrates and inhabitants contributing to build and ornament the edifice. The church is still standing, in the quarter of the Rialto, which is universally considered the oldest part of Venice. THEODORIC THE GREAT, AND HIS LOVE OF THE FINE ARTS. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and afterwards also king of Italy, was born at Amali, near Vienna, in 455, and died in 526. Though a Goth, he was so far from delighting in the destruction of public monuments, and works of art, that he issued edicts for their preservation at Rome and throughout Italy, and assigned revenues for the repair of the public edifices, for which purpose he employed the most skillful and learned architects, particularly Aloisius, Boetius, and Symmachus. According to Cassiodorus (lib. ii. Varior. Epist. xxxix.), Theodoric said: "It is glorious to preserve the works of antiquity; and it is our duty to restore the most useful and the most beautiful." Symmachus had the direction of the buildings constructed or rebuilt at Rome. The king thus wrote to him: "You have constructed fine edifices; you have, moreover, disposed of them with so much wisdom that they equal those of antiquity, and serve as examples to the moderns; and all you show us is a perfect image of the excellence of your mind, because it is not possible to build correctly without good sense and a well cultivated understanding." In his directions to the Prefect of Rome, on the architecture of the public edifices, Theodoric thus wrote: