"The Venetian Empire was the most extensive, and promised to be the most durable, which had been formed on any constitutional principles since the days of the Romans. The Venetian Senate was the most august assembly in the world. The Venetian Navy was the finest which Europe had ever seen. During war, Venice employed, even at an exorbitant stipend, the best troops to be procured and the ablest generals of the age; and among her Captains of Companies it was not unusual to find Hereditary Princes. Her patricians, so far from being purely political in their education or sordid in their tastes, prided themselves on the extent and versatility of their acquirements. They excelled in all manly exercises and in all enlightened pursuits. Not content with reading contemporary history, with mastering the intricacies of diplomacy, or with attaining the highest honors in the military profession, they studied the language which Cicero spoke, the language of the Anabasis, and the language of Holy Writ. They applied themselves to the liberal, mechanical, and occult sciences, and to the Fine Arts. They became diligent scholiasts. They searched for manuscripts with an avidity eclipsing that of De Bure. They formed libraries, some of which were far larger than the Public Collections at Oxford or Paris. Some gave gratuitous instruction in the Elements of Euclid; others lectured on Ethics or Metaphysics. A Trevisano devoted ten years to the composition of a single Treatise, which he never lived to finish. A Giorgio naturalized among his countrymen the literature of the Troubadours and the songs of Provence. To a Polo, scientific men were indebted for the first book on Travels in China, Kamtschatka, and Japan. A Pisani filled Europe with the fame of {177} her beauty and genius; and four nations competed for the privilege of doing her honor! She chose France, and France was flattered by the choice. 'D'avoir le prix en science et en doctrine, Bien mérita de Pisan la Christine, Durant ses jours.'" But the deep interest we feel in Francesco Foscari is not centred in the affairs of Venice while he served as its figure-head and held but a semblance of power, the real potency being in the Seigniory and Council of Ten. In the great rush of state affairs, conducted as they had come to be, each single man was lost. The State only survived; and its methods of secret councils and its schemes of unlimited ambition made of this same State a vast and overwhelming machine, the workings of which in their completeness were only comprehended by a few patricians, each one of whom was jealously watching to prevent every other from the exercise of any distinguishing or undue power.