The foreign influence slowly killed the manly virtues of the Genoese. Italy no longer existed. We had a corrupt people in a corrupt state. All care was given to externals; every free thought was a crime; we were vile and called our vileness love of peace, and our indolence, moderation; religion had become a superstition, and the rites of the church merely a ladder to worldly preferment. Luxury and parade were unparalleled; but poverty was seen through the pompous vestments. The first born was rich, but his brothers were usurers or celibates in the cloisters. In their vanity and degradation, the great forgot that they had a country. Trade seemed ignominious to our princes and nobles, and they believed that their names at the foot of a bill of exchange would make a bad figure in history. This beggared many families to whom false pride closed the paths by which their fathers had become great. Knightly virtues disappeared; noble blood alone opened the paths to eminence, and this was carried to such extremes that our patricians refused to have for archbishop Belmosto, only because his name was not in the book of gold. They were at once proud and ridiculous. In 1576, a Nicolò Doria became Doge and first took the title of _Serenissimo_ and severe penalties forbade even the notaries to call other persons than nobles--however illustrious and wealthy they might be--by the title _Magnifico_. The notarial profession[54] itself was pronounced in certain cases ignoble and mechanical. In the smaller towns the same folly prevailed. In Ventimiglia and Finale, there were streets, porches and walks to which the plebeians were not admitted. Genoa was only a shadow, a pretence of a Republic. Our wars and intestine struggles, our magnanimous enterprises abroad, were succeeded by a servile tranquility. Our masters preferred their gilded saloons to the dust of honourable fields; they lent their money at usurious interest, and got titles and degrading premiums for their baseness. There were, it is true, some naval engagements, but there were no real wars. And this was the supreme misfortune; for long peace wastes the strength of peoples and destroys both the habit and the courage of noble enterprises. There lingered among us arts, letters, wealth and trade; but the manly virtues were extinct.