We come now to the papers of the Council of Ten; all of these were committed to the custody of the Secret Chancellery. We have already seen that the Council of Ten was an extraordinary office, used upon extraordinary occasions, where secrecy and speed were required. Its chief occupations may be summed up under three heads--safety of the State, protection of citizens, and public morals. That being the case, the number and interest of its documents is very great--greater than that of any other Council of State; but this interest is confined, for the most part, to matters affecting the home policy of the Republic; foreign affairs finds comparatively little illustration among the papers of the Ten. The series of documents, containing the ordinary business of the Ten, dates from the year 1315 to the close of the Republic. The documents are arranged according to the matter they deal with, that is to say political matter, _parti communi_ and _secreti_, or criminal matter, _parti crimminali_. The immense importance and interest attaching to the papers of the Ten will be illustrated by the statement, that there we find the cases of Marino Faliero, of the Carraresi, of Carmagnola, of Foscari, of Caterina Cornaro, and of Foscarini. Among the papers of the Collegio we find ourselves once more in the general current of foreign politics. The ordinary proceedings of the College, the papers containing the arrangement and discussion of affairs to be presented to the Senate, are included in the volumes of files and registers, known as the Notatorii del Collegio. The College was entrusted, as we have said, to receive all the representatives of foreign Powers and to open all letters and dispatches addressed to the Government. It is in the three series known as Lettere Principi, Espozioni Principi, and Ceremoniali, that we obtain the fullest information about the action of the agents from foreign Courts resident in Venice. The series called Lettere Principi, letters from royal personages, covers the years between 1500 and 1797, and is contained in fifty-four volumes of _filze_. England is represented by two of these, beginning with the year 1570, and ending with 1796, entitled 'Collegio, Secreta, Lettere. Re e Regina d'Inghilterra.' These volumes contain one hundred and seventy-one letters, thus distributed among the various sovereigns; there are thirteen in the reign of Elizabeth; forty in that of James I.; four in that of Charles I.; three from Oliver Cromwell; one from Richard Cromwell; one from Speaker Lenthal: ten during the reign of Charles II.; five during that of his brother; three during the reign of William, including one from the Old Pretender; seven in the reign of Anne; eight in that of George I.; twenty-one from George II; and fifty-five from George III. These letters are concerned with formal announcements and the exchange of courtesies, the credentials of ambassadors and notices of royal births, marriages and deaths. Their