on our fathers, in respect of manly virtue, faith in things divine, or honesty when it does not happen to be the best policy; but as an age of men we are not greedy of food. The Venetians were. Not only did they employ French cooks and spend much time in considering what things to eat, but their dinners were so interminably long, and the courses they ate were so numerous, that they found it convenient to use three dining-rooms in succession for the same meal, the first being for the soup and the beef, the second for the roast meats and vegetables, and the third for the pudding and dessert. The Venetians were near their end when they ceased to be men of business and turned into gamblers and spendthrifts. All this extravagance, especially in the country, led to financial embarrassment at the end of the season; and in order to satisfy the creditors who then appeared in force, it was necessary to rackrent the peasants or to sell property and produce at ruinous prices. In one of his comedies Goldoni makes a ruined nobleman say again and again to his steward, ‘Caro vecchio, fè vu’--‘My dear old man, manage it yourself.’ The expression was so true to life that not one but a number of nobles complained to the government that they were being publicly libelled by a playwright. Everything was in a state of decay already approaching ruin. When the Princess Gonzaga came to Venice [Sidenote: _Archivio Stor. Ital. fourth series, vol. xvi. p. 180._] she had such an abominable reputation that no Venetian lady had the courage to present her to the society of the capital. At last, however, the Signora Tron, the wife of a procurator of Saint Mark, offered to do so. She introduced the Princess with these historic words: ‘Ladies, this is the [Illustration: RIO DELLA TORESELA] Princess Gonzaga. She belongs to an illustrious family. As for the rest, I will not answer for her, nor for you, nor for myself.’ She was wise in refusing to answer for herself, at all events, for she was accused of setting a higher price on [Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Sketches._] her box at the theatre than on herself. ‘That is true,’ she answered, ‘for I sometimes give myself for nothing.’ It is comprehensible that where great ladies talked like this, a burgher dame should have put up her [Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 82._] daughter’s honour at a lottery, for which the tickets were sold at a sequin, about fifteen shillings, each. The decadence was turning into final degeneration, and everything morbid was hailed with enthusiasm. [Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali, 34._] Two lovers committed suicide, for instance, and immediately handkerchiefs were sold everywhere adorned with a death’s head in one corner, and embroidered in the middle with the lovers’ initials surrounded with stains of the colour of blood.