Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of Protestantism from its side?[27] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it." FOOTNOTES: [1] Appendix 1, "Foundation of Venice." [2] Appendix 2, "Power of the Doges." [3] Sismondi, Hist. des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v. [4] Appendix 3, "Serrar del Consiglio." [5] "Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino._) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed. [6] Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii. [7] Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment. [8] Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their territories. [9] The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.) [10] By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.) [11] Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello." [12] Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, § V. [13] "In that temple porch, (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,) Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off, And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake On his stone pillow."