OLD CITIES WHICH STILL EXIST. Many of the towns which grew up in the Middle Ages are now the great cities of England and Europe. Their citizens can look back a thousand years and more over the history of their city, can point to churches, to town halls, and sometimes to private houses, that have stood all this time. They can often show the remains of mediaeval walls or broad streets where once these walls stood, and the moats that surrounded them. The traveler in York or London, in Paris, in Nuremburg, in Florence, or in Rome eagerly searches for the relics about which so many interesting stories of the past are told. VENICE AND GENOA. One of the most fascinating of these old cities is Venice, built upon low-lying islands two miles from the shore of Italy and protected by a sand bar from the waters of the Adriatic. Venice was founded by men and women who fled from a Roman city on the mainland which was ruined by the barbarians in the fifth century after Christ. In many places piles had to be driven into the loose sands to furnish a foundation for houses. The Venetians did not try to keep out the water but used it as streets, and instead of driving in wagons they went about in boats. They grew rich in trade on the sea, as the Greeks had done in those same waters hundreds of years before. Farther down the coast of Italy were the cities Brindisi and Taranto, the Brundusium and Tarentum of the Romans. Across the peninsula to the west was another trading city called Genoa, which was the birthplace of Columbus. MODERN LANGUAGES. While the people of mediaeval times were building city walls and towers to protect themselves they were also doing other things. Almost without knowing it they formed the languages which we now speak and write--English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. The English and German languages are closely related because the forefathers of the English emigrated to England from Germany, taking their language with them. This older language was gradually changed, but it still remained like German. Dutch is another language like both English and German. There are many words in these languages borrowed from other peoples. Englishmen, because of their long union with western France, borrowed many words from the French. The French did not invent these words, for the French language grew out of the Latin language which the French learned from the Romans.