its own supremacy; the most attractive town in the district where the best Italian was supposed to be spoken. Siena was preferred by purists for language, but the slight distinction was outweighed by just those charms which have not been impaired by age. One more has indeed been added that might be expected to have existed then, but did not; what Ben Jonson wrote in "Volpone" in summing up the qualities of the poets of Italy and eulogising Guarini. Dante is hard and few can understand him was but an echo of the Italians' own opinion. "Like Dante's 'Inferno' which no man understandeth" was a Venetian Senator's description of Henry IV's policy in 1606.[43] Assuming the third route to be the one chosen, there was Ferrara to pass, but not to stay at when Venice was almost in sight—Venice in 1600! to have been a witness of that would make it well worth while to have been dead for the past three hundred years. The essence of the change is best expressed in the words of Mr. L. P. Smith in his "Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton," when he speaks of it as "a shell on the shores of the Adriatic deserted by the wonderful organism that once inhabited it." Outward and visible signs of the vividness and breadth of its life were two in particular; the infinite variety and number of persons and nationalities that filled its streets with colour and contrast and a sense of new worlds and of mystery in the midst of commerce; and secondly, the Arsenal. In all Europe there was not such another organisation as the Arsenal; not one so completely prepared with everything that went to the fitting out of a fleet, and very few so well able to fit out an army. Villamont was shown twenty-five great galleasses and eighty-five galleys, all of them so new that they had not been out to sea. Probably, also, its managers were the greatest direct employers of labour in Christendom; 2880 is one of the more moderate estimates of those permanently at work, including the 200 old women always mending sails, a number increased to 700 at times; and all these employees were assured of a pension from the State when past work, an otherwise unheard-of custom then, in practice, at least. It had its place, too, in the tourist's mythology; one after another repeating the tale how when Henry III of France visited Venice, a galley was built and three cannon turned out while he was at dinner.