in ignorance. Amongst the lands and strongholds which fell to the share of the Venetians may be mentioned Lacedaemon, Durazzo, the Islands of the Cyclades and Sporades, and the Island of Crete, or Candia, taken over in a friendly exchange from the Marquis of Montferrat, and all the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The Doge of Venice added to his titles the one of ‘Lord and Master of a quarter and a half-quarter of the Roman Empire,’ and in official acts the new Emperor was to address him as ‘Carissimus Socius nostri Imperii.’ This vast and sudden extension of territory, while it at once placed the Republic on an equal footing with the greatest European powers, had many disadvantages, and was fraught with dangers. Venice consisted properly of nothing more than the city and the duchy, with a population which Sismondi estimates at two hundred thousand souls; the partition of the Empire conferred upon Venice, by a stroke of the pen, many thousand square miles of land and seven or eight millions of subjects, and Venice, as the author I am quoting very pithily says, though not able to annex Padua, only twenty miles from the lagoons, was now undertaking to subdue what constituted a powerful kingdom, and to defend it against Turks, Bulgarians, Wallachians, and possibly even against the Latins of Constantinople. It was clear that though the commerce of the Republic might gain immensely by this extension of her dominions, the responsibility assumed by the Republic was far beyond that which so limited a population could [Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 183._] bear, and that the expenses of administering and defending the distant provinces would be enormous. Nor could the Venetians afford to overlook the fact that their great rivals, Genoa and Pisa, would spare no effort to drive them from their new possessions by fair means or foul. Before the taking of Constantinople the rich citizens either lived at home altogether or returned after each voyage to fit their ships for another; but so soon as the Republic became the possessor of important colonies in the East, it was manifestly necessary that a considerable number of the most experienced and bravest Venetians should remain constantly abroad to administer and defend those new possessions.