And what can we say of the ends to which she directed her success, the scope of her arts, the nature of her pleasures? It must be admitted by all that the soul of Venice was capacious, unique in its harmony of imagination and political acumen; unique in its power of commanding and retaining respect. A great soul was in the men of Venice; it was present in all their activities, in their commerce as in their art. The two were most intimately allied. Again and again the chroniclers of Venice crown their catalogue of her glories with the reminder that their foundation is in commerce, that the Venetians are a nation of shopkeepers, and “you have only come to such estate by reason of the trade done by your shipping in various parts of the world.” Even in the fifteenth century it was deemed complimentary to say to a newly elected Doge, “You have been a great trader in your young days.” The greatness of Venice was coincident with the greatness of her trade. She was lit, it is true, with the ancient stars of her splendour after the mortal blow had been struck at her commerce by the discovery of the Cape route to the East, but the old unity of her strength had been lost--the firm foundations of the days when the nobles of Venice had been the directors of her enterprise. And at the end of the fifteenth century they no longer sat, in their togas, behind the counters in Rialto, or made the basements of their houses into stores. They had ceased to apprentice their sons to the merchants on the sea-going galleys. They still acted as commanders of the ships in times of war, but in intervals of peace the gulf between noble and merchant was constantly being enlarged. The commercial traveller was no longer considered one of the most distinguished of citizens. The corner stone had been taken from the building of Rialto; it had begun to crumble to the dissolution lamented by Grevembroch in his strange book on Venetian costumes. In the great days of Venice her commerce was great, and she knew how to robe it in glory, how to attract to it the noblest, and not the meanest, of her sons. Her shops were the objects of her proudest solicitude, and the well-being of her merchants the first of her cares. The hostels provided for foreign traders ranked with the most sumptuous of her palaces, and the rules framed for their guidance were amongst the most liberal in her legislature.