He who visits Venice, or is familiar with Ruskin’s _Stones of Venice_, or at least has admired in some gallery the paintings of the great Venetian masters, must inevitably think of the sea. Those richly designed palaces, those luxuriant examples of architecture and art, were expressive of a city grown wealthy by reason of her sea trade. Her merchants amassed wealth because their ships enabled them to trade—the sea is, in fact, the greatest road to riches. And the history of Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Venice, Portugal, Spain, Holland, England in the past, and quite recently Germany, Japan and the United States, is the story of overseas trade by means of merchant shipping. Most important of all have always been the sea routes to the Orient, for Eastern produce has ever fetched high prices in European countries. As we look through the centuries of sea trade it was the fascination of the East which spurred men to build, fit out and sail ships. It was this which gave the incentive to make navigation a science; it was this which created the spirit to explore unknown seas; it was this which sent Columbus, later on, to the West in the hope of finding the East Indies. The whole story of the East India Company—indeed of our Indian Empire—is built up on the invaluable products which could be fetched thence by peaceable shipping. It was in the seventh century that the twelve townships decided to elect one supreme magistrate, called the “doge.” Venice thus insisted on her own independence, and her geographical position enabled her to rise into a consummate commercial state. Not merely did she eventually dominate the Adriatic, but step by step she absorbed all the carrying trade of the world. Keen, enterprising men of vision and foresight, these Venetian merchants went far afield, in spite of the difficulties and dangers of travel. For centuries the Chinese had been sending merchant ships as far west as Ceylon, whence Indian ships carried the silk and other goods a stage further west to the Persian Gulf; and afterwards, as there was no Suez Canal, a land journey intervened until the Mediterranean was reached. Thus, by the early years of the Middle Ages, the Venetian ships of commerce brought across the Mediterranean and up the Adriatic the costly skins, the peacocks’ tails, the purple garments and other enviable articles which had come from India, the Caspian shores and elsewhere. In the end, Venice captured the great trade to India and China, and Constantinople was left behind in the competition.