was not provided, the moral condition of the mass of the people was degraded; peace was made the prey of faction, and, in too many cases, the blossoms of freedom, which might have set into precious fruit, "went up as dust." There were some Italian cities, especially Amalfi and Venice, which, in consequence of their dependence on the eastern emperors, their relations and intercourse with Constantinople, and their commercial activity, differed in their social condition from the cities of Lombardy. They were decidedly in advance of their neighbours--civilisation there made more rapid strides and reflected some tinge of orientalism. Amalfi shines with conspicuous lustre from the sixth to the twelfth century, when its glory was extinguished by the Norman king of the Sicilies. There can be no doubt that its commercial intercourse with Constantinople, where eastern luxury prevailed, in the middle ages, and the trade which it carried on with the Saracens, who were the chief cultivators of the arts and sciences during that period, tended to raise the city of Amalfi, as it relates to artistic civilisation, to a proud position. Some additional refinement might probably be imparted to it, by its close vicinity to Salerno, which was only seven miles distant, where learning was cultivated, and a school of medicine established--the first of the kind in Europe. But the lustre of Amalfi is eclipsed by that of Venice, which, if at an earlier period she were inferior, at a later period vastly surpassed her rival in commercial greatness. Formed by bands of refugees who fled from the sword of Alaric and Attila to the lagoons, which spread at the extremity of the Adriatic gulf, this city of the waters rose till she became the ocean queen. For a hundred years, Venice consisted only of some scattered fishers' huts, like the nests of aquatic fowls, on the shifting sands, protected by slender fences of twisted osiers.[2] The population was supported by fishing, the making of salt, and some other humble manufactures; and probably the insignificance of the infant republic preserved her from the attacks of enemies, and from the oppression of the eastern emperors, to whom she owed subjection. Her earliest form of government was essentially democratic, for tribunes elected by the people ruled her affairs; but owing to the factions and jealousies which arose among them it was resolved, at the close of the seventh century, that one chief magistrate, called a doge, should be elected by the people, who should be invested with sovereign authority, and should choose inferior officers. Many were the civil commotions of Venice under this form of government; and out of about forty of her citizens who successively wore the ducal bonnet, nearly half were killed, deprived of sight, or banished. Yet, withal, Venice went on growing in importance, wealth, and power, and as we look upon her history, a sort of magical effect is produced, somewhat like a dissolving view.