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Persepolis, and Nineveh—but Imperial Rome awes us with a solemn sense of her mighty mind, as well as her magnificence. It is the genius loci of the great capital that invests it with such deep and absorbing interest. "It is because she was the lawgiver of the nations; parent of institutions that give civility and development to society; inventress of the arts that establish right through reason; source of that social wisdom which is civil power,—that the all-imperial city sits throned in the ever-during reverence of the mind, girt with a divinity invisible, perhaps, to the frivolous, but irresistible to the thoughtful minded."

ITALIAN LIBERTY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

The sea, that emblem of uncertainty,

Changed not so fast, for many and many an age,

As this small spot."

WHEN the irruption of the Teutonic tribes into the Roman Empire had plunged Europe in barbarism, the first attempt at the establishment of order and government was the creation of the feudal system. "The establishment of the feudal system had a powerful and striking influence upon European civilization. It changed the distribution of the population. Hitherto, the lords of the territory, the conquering population, had lived united in masses more or less numerous, either settled in cities, or moving about the country in bands; but, by the operation of the feudal system, these men were brought to live isolated, each in his own dwelling, at long distances apart."*

No system has been so powerful in checking democratic liberty as feudalism. Leaguing with the throne or the Church, as circumstances rendered necessary, it consolidated power, and became, as it were, an integral part of government. The people, ignored by it, were only used to add vis inertia to the pretensions and encroachments of their oppressors.

But one country refused its adoption. Whilst the rest of Europe was developing feudality, Italy barred its progress beyond the Alps, and created those asylums of individual liberty, the various Republics, which it is now our intention to examine.

The Italian Republics of the Middle Ages demand the serious attention of our citizens, suffering, as they did, from like attack with ourselves, and succumbing eventually beneath those evils which

* Guizot.

equally affect us, and which, if unchecked, will ultimately prove our ruin. The Italian commonwealths are worthy the love and esteem of our citizens; for they preserved all that then remained of democracy, and shielded liberty from destruction during the most critical period of European affairs. We do not propose to give a history of all or any of these States, but, glancing at their origin and prosperity, to study those causes which destroyed freedom, and thus, from the misfortunes of Italy, to inculcate a warning to America.

The municipal government which Rome had established throughout the empire, had taken deep root in Italy, and having flourished during many centuries, offered a firm barrier to the progress of feudalism. This system had existed too long for Italy to unite as one nation. Each large city had a government peculiar to itself; and the smaller towns which sprung up around them, entering into alliance for mutual defence, formed the nucleus of a republic.

Venice seems to have been one of the earliest States which developed the republican form of government. The hordes of Lombards which devastated Italy in the sixth and seventh centuries, succeeded in establishing their power in the north and south, but failed on the Lagunes, at the extremity of the Adriatic. As early as the time of Attila, these marshes had been the refuge for the rich citizens of various towns, fleeing from the Huns and other barbarous tribes.

"A few in fear

Flying away from him, whose boast it was

That the grass grew not where his horse had trod,

Gave birth to Venice."

In course of time, a large population found a home on the various islands, supporting themselves by the making of salt, fishing, and the commerce of the various rivers whose mouths form the Lagunes. "Like the water-fowl,

They built their nests among the ocean-waves."

The barbarians, not possessing any vessels, left these refugees unmolested; and they maintained their independence under the adminis

tration of tribunes, named by the inhabitants of the various islands. Each island formed a separate State, and thus jealousies and disputes arose, until, at length, they united themselves into one republic, electing an assembly and a chief, to whom they gave the name of Doge. In 809, during a war with Pepin, they made choice of the island of the Rialto as their capital, and, twenty years later, transported thither the body of St. Mark, whom they chose as their patron saint.

In the south, the republics of Gaeta, Amalfi, and Naples had successfully resisted the attacks of Lombards and Saracens, and covered the Levant with ships of merchandise. To Amalfi is due the glory of the invention of the mariner's compass, the establishment of the order of the Knights Hospitalers of Jerusalem, and the preservation of the pandects of Justinian. Naples and Amalfi both succumbed to the Normans, under Roger II., in the beginning of the twelfth century.

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When, towards the end of the eleventh century, the Western world took up the dispute with the Saracens for the sepulchre of Jesus Christ, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa had already reached a high point of commercial power. These three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean than the whole of Christendom besides. They seconded the Crusaders with enthusiasm. They provisioned them when arrived off the coast of Syria, and kept up their communication with the West. The Venetians assert that they sent a fleet of two hundred vessels, in the year 1099, to aid the first crusade. The Pisans affirm that their archbishop, Daimbert-who was afterwards Patriarch of Jerusalem-passed into the East with a hundred and twenty vessels. The Genoese claim only twenty-eight galleys and six vessels. But all concurred with equal zeal in the conquest of the Holy Land; and the three maritime republics obtained important privileges, which they preserved as long as the kingdom of Jerusalem lasted."*

Such was the prosperity of the Italian Republics when Frederic Barbarossa determined to abolish their freedom, and render Italy an * Sismondi.

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