The greatest commercial, and altogether the most remarkable city of the Italian republics, was Venice. Secluded from the world, on a cluster of islands in the Adriatic, the inhabitants of this city had taken up their abode in the course of the fifth century, and they boasted themselves to have been independent of all the revolutions which Europe had been undergoing since the fall of the Roman Empire. This might be true to a great extent, though for long it was certainly more the result of their obscurity than their power. By the tenth century, however, the desendants of those fishermen that had first taken refuge here, were able to send fleets abroad which could encounter and overawe both Saracens and Normans. The Venetians had all along kept up a correspondence with Constantinople during the darkest periods of the middle ages. This was greatly renewed and extended about the time of the Crusades. When Constantinople was taken by the Latins (1204), the Venetians, under their doge, or chief magistrate, Henry Dandalo, became possessed of three-eighths of that great city and of the provinces, and Dandalo assumed the singularly accurate title of Duke of Three-Eighths of the Roman Empire. The Venetians greatly increased their share of the spoil by making advantageous purchases from the more needy of the Crusaders. Among the most important of these was the Isle of Candia, which they retained till the middle of the seventeenth century. The idea of a bank took its rise in this city, and an establishment of that nature, simply for the receipt of deposits, is said to have existed in it as soon as the year 1157. But it was not till about a century later that banking, as the term is now understood, began at all to be practised. The merchants of Lombardy and of the south of France began at that time to remit money by bills of exchange and to make profit upon loans. The Italian clergy who had benefices beyond the Alps, found the new method of transmitting money exceedingly convenient; and the system of exacting usury or interest, after experiencing every obstruction from ignorance and bigotry, became a legal part of commerce. In the thirteenth century the government of Venice was entirely republican; but continued wars with Genoa reduced both cities. These wars were all conducted on the seas, and the display of naval strength on both sides seems prodigious, when we reflect on the poor condition of Italy at the present day. Besides these wars for objects of ambition, there were continual jealousies which rose above enlightened views of self-interest, and led to the most disgraceful broils. At the middle of the fourteenth century a battle took place between the rival citizens, in which the Genoese were defeated. Their loss was immense, and in distress and in revenge they gave themselves up to John Visconti, Lord of Milan, then the richest and among the most ambitious of the petty tyrants of Italy, hoping that he would give them the