fifteenth century there is a long list of English ambassadors and ministers resident in Venice. The last English diplomatic representative in Venice was Sir Richard Worsley, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. All the foreign diplomatists in Venice were constantly on the look-out for the arrival of the special mounted messengers attached to each foreign embassy. These were celebrated throughout Europe for their speed and discretion. In the fifteenth century they were thirty-two in number, and formed a small guild which was under the protection of Saint Catharine; and they were almost all natives of Bergamo, a city which is still singularly noted for the honesty and faithfulness of its inhabitants, and which even now furnishes Venice with trusty house-porters and other servants of whom responsibility is required. [Illustration: CALLE BECCHERIA] In the _Souvenirs_ of M. Armand Baschet, I find that the courier who brought the news of the signing of the treaty of Cambrai from Blois to Venice covered the distance in eight days, the best previous record to Paris, which is about the same distance, having been nine, and the usual time employed being fifteen. The employment of State courier could be bought and could be left by will. Each ambassador of the Republic seemed to possess a part of the marvellously universal vision that belonged to the Council of Ten. Mr. Rawdon Brown made a special study of the weekly letters of the Venetian ambassadors in England, and found, for instance, that one of the Republic’s representatives succeeded in regularly copying the letters which Queen Elizabeth wrote to her lovers, which were therefore read aloud to the Senate with the greatest regularity, together with many other curious details of English court life. I shall give two specimens, translated from the weekly letters in the Albèri collection. In 1531 the patrician Ludovico Falier came to render an account of his mission to the Court of Henry VIII. He expresses himself as follows, concerning that King and the English:--