Venice surpassed herself in the reception given to Henry III. of France in 1574. The young king was met at Malghera--the modern traveller will pass a fort erected there as he nears the railway bridge--by sixty Senators in gondolas covered with velvet, oriental carpets and cloth of gold, and was ferried to Murano, where he passed the night in one of the rich palaces with delicious gardens for which the island was then noted. Sixty halberdiers clothed in silk of azure and gold were his bodyguard: forty noble youths of the Calza were his attendants. On the morrow amid salvos of artillery he embarked for Venice in a great galley manned by four hundred Sclavonians clothed in yellow and turquoise taffety, followed by an immense train of galleys and gondolas decorated with carpets and tapestry, with banners and flags waving in the breeze. The procession of the trade guilds, formed of a hundred and seventy boats resplendent with crimson and silver and gold, was a dazzling pageant. The glass-workers excelled in splendour and invention. A marine monster, in whose body could be seen a furnace, and craftsmen making most beautiful crystal vases, led their section, breathing flames from his mouth. Then followed a boat in the shape of a great dolphin bestridden by Neptune; on the poop stood two winged angels to waft it along. Four river gods personifying the Brenta, the Adige, the Po and the Piove plied the oars. At S. Nicolo del Lido, Palladio had constructed a triumphal arch adorned with statues of Victory, Peace, Faith and Justice, and with ten paintings by Titian and Tintoretto portraying events in the King’s life. His Majesty lodged in the Palazzo Foscari from which an opening was made into the Palazzo Giustiniani to accommodate his suite, the whole being furnished with oriental magnificence. At a State ball given in the hall of the Great Council, two hundred gorgeously attired ladies were present glittering with jewels and precious stones. The Sala dello Scrutinio was made into a supper-room where twelve hundred and sixty plates of sweetmeats in the forms of griffins, ships, nymphs, deities, etc., tempted the palates of the guests. Regattas, serenades and jousts made the whole visit seem a dream of enchantment to the King. As trade languished and the population diminished, public shows increased in splendour. The sum expended at the election and coronation of the last Doge--forty-seven thousand, two hundred and ninety-eight ducats, was beyond all precedent. Venice was still the temple of pleasure. All the arts subservient to the luxury and vices of the rich flourished in rankest exuberance despite the efforts of the Ten to cleanse public morals and to enforce sumptuary laws. The excessive importance too of the stage and of its tinselled heroes and tawdry queens, was an infallible symptom of a decadent nation. The time came in the eighteenth century when the State was torn by the petty