their piles, and built upon them again, till the whole became one vast city, extending to many more of those islands beyond the original seventy-two.

As it was indebted in a great measure, for its rise and importance to the commerce of the East, which was then carried on by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria, when the passage by the Cape of Good Hope was discovered, that trade declined, and Venice declined gradually along

with it.

It is amazing what an extent of territory and accumulation of power the Venetians once possessed. Besides their present possessions, which comprehend the territories of Padua and Verona, the Vincentine, the Brescians, the Bergamases, the Cremasco, the Polesin of Rovigo, Marca Trevigiana, the Patria del Friuli, and Istria, they had under their dominion the islands of Rhodes, Scio, Samos, Mytilene, Andros, Candia, the Morea, and the cities of Gallipoli and Thessalonica: besides which, they in conjunction with France, took Constantinople, and remained for some time masters of that part of the Empire; and disputed the dominion of Sclavonia, Croatia, Morlachia and Dalmatia, with the Kings of Hungary, and contended with the Genoese for the empire of the sea but of a great part of these, and their other conquests, they have since been stripped, almost entirely, by the Turks.

As to the government of Venice, I shall not enter into any particulars of its history-It is called a republic, and was once a democracy. The name remains, while that. which gave it is gone. It is, certainly now a downright arise tocracy the privilege of sitting in the great Council be-ing confined to the nobility; and the doge under the name of head, being no more than a gaudy slave, loaded with fetters: yet, such is the idle fondness of man for superficial pomp, that this office is sought after with avidity; for though his power be small, his state is very splendid. Hence it is said, that the doge of Venice is a king in his robes, a senator in council, a prisoner in the city, and a private man out of it; and what is more extraordinary, is, that though he may be deposed, he cannot resign-nor even decline the office, if he be once cho

sen, without exposing himself to banishment, and his effects to confiscation.

The established religion of this state is the Roman Catholic; but the Venetians are not bigots, and reject the supremacy of the Pope. Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Protestants, are allowed the exercise of their religion there; and provided they do not intermeddle with state affairs, of which they are extremely jealous, even their priests, monks, and nuns, may take almost any liberties they please a privilege that you may be assured is not neglected by any of them.

As few places have excited greater admiration and attention than Venice, so none have been more copiously described by travellers, every one of whom may, when he returns to his native country, give a very accurate account of the public buildings, curiosities, paintings, &c. by only translating the book given to him by his valet de place, or cicerone, on his arrival there-It is certain, Venice abounds with all those, particularly paintings; but I had not time minutely to investigate; nor should I have the inclination, if I did, to describe such things: they are open to you in many well written volumes, which I recommend to your perusal. Such things, however, as strike me for their novelty, or difference from those in other places, I will, as well as I can recollect them, give you an idea of.

To their local situation they owe their security-separated from terra firma by a body of water of five miles in breadth, too deep to be forded, and too shallow for vessels of force to pass; and on the other side, by scattered shallows, the channels between which are marked out by stakes, which, on the appearance of an enemy, they can take away; they bid defiance to hostile army or navy, and have not been reduced to the necessi ty of erecting walls or fortifications for their defence..

The first peculiarity that strikes me, as arising immediately from their living, I may say, in the sea, is the total exclusion of all sort of carriages; for those streets that are on firm ground are extremely narrow and crooked; and on most of the canals, so far from having a quay on either side to walk on, the water comes up to

the doors of the houses; so that walking is but little known, for they get into a boat off their threshold, and their first step out of it again is, ten to one, on the threshold of another. This circumstance, though in some respects it has its uses, is, in others, extremely disagreeable, as well as injurious; for, though those who have occasion to labor have a sufficiency of exercise, those whose condition exempts them from labor, and who therefore, in all other countries, resort to artificial labor (exercise) for the promotion of health, are here entirely cut off from all such means of it as we practise, having neither hunting, shooting, riding, bowling, &c. &c. nor can they have them, unless they go to the Continent for them. The chief amusements of the Venetians are reserved for the carnival time, which commences about a week after Christmas, and which, therefore, I could not see; but, from the current testimony of all travellers and the people themselves, as well as from the evidence of my own observation on the manners of the people, I am well warranted in saying, are festivals of debauchery, riot, and licentiousness. This is a subject on which I am, nevertheless, disposed to believe, that more has been said than truth will bear out-yet, a bare state. ment of the truth, would, I fear, bear hard enough upon the moral character, or at least the piety, of the Venetians.

That masquerades are the very worst schools of vice, the private anecdotes of the beau monde even in England might suffice to demonstrate-That courtezans are found lost to all sense of modesty and common decency, the streets of London afford nightly proofs Therefore, that masquerading (which is the amusement of the Venetians) should cloak many crimes, and that their courtezans should be shameless and their women lewd, is no such wonder, seeing, as we do, those things in this Northern clime; but we may, without any illiberality, suppose, that, from physical causes of the most obvious kind, they are carried to a greater extent there than here: though one of the most enlightened and amiable of all travellers says it would be hard to be proved, yet, with deference to him, I think it may be rationally supposed.

There is an active principle in the mind of man which will not suffer it to rest; it must have some materials to work upon. Men, enlightened by science, have within themselves a fund, and can never want food for contemplation; but the many, in those hours when a suspension of labor or worldly business drives them to expedients for the employment of their time, are but too prone to leave the mind to the guidance of the senses, and to cogitate on vice till they wish to practise it. Hence that homely but true saying, "Idleness is the root of all evil." In England we have a variety of expedients which the Venetians want, whose minds being besides naturally more vivid, are more prompt to give a loose to the warm illusions of sensual fancy. Thus prepared, they meet the carnival, when every thing conspires to give circulation to indulgence; and when those operations of the mind which with us have so many channels to discharge themselves, with them, like a vast stream suddenly confined to one narrow channel, burst forth with an irre sistable torrent, and carry away before them every bond that religion or morality has laid down as restraints on the exhuberance of human passion. The customs and habits of the place and the time contribute to it; for, while the severe restrictions of the female sex for the rest of the year sharpen both inclination and invention on the one hand on the other, the unbounded license, the universal change of habits, customs and laws the total suspension of all distinction, care, or business which take place at that time, aided by perpetual masquerade -and those most convenient of all receptacles, the gondolas, with those most expert and forward of all pandars, the gondoliers-afford ample scope to their wishes, and form altogether a mass of circumstances in favor of vi cious indulgence, not to be found in any other part of Christendom; to resist which, they must be more virtuous than any other people-a point never yet laid to their charge by the best-natured and most extenuating of all those who have written upon that subject.

LETTER XXV.

PROFLIG

ROFLIGATE though the people of London are, I will not allow that it is so vicious a city as Venice. That there are in it, and indeed in all capitals, individuals who have reached the highest acme of shameless debauchery and depravity, it would be foolish to deny but that concubinage is practised in the same open way, so generally, or so systematically as at Venice, no one will venture to assert. I trust the day of depravity and indelicacy is far removed from us, that will exhibit a British mother arranging a plan of accommodation for her son, and bargaining for a young virgin to commit to his embraces as they do in Venice-not as wife, but as concubine. On that one custom of the Venetian ladies I rest my position? and have no hesitation to avow, that all the pri vate concubinage of London amounts not to such a fiagrant consummation of moral turpitude and shameless indelicacy as that practice to which I allude.

The Venetian men are well-featured and well-shapedthe women, well-shaped, beautiful, and, it is said, witty: but I had that within which robbed every object of its charms; and I might say with Hamlet, that " man delighted not me, nor woman either."-In short, not all the beauties and novelty of the place, not all the pleasures that stare the traveller in the face, and solicit his enjoyment, not all the exquisite looks of the ladies, could rouse my mind from its melancholy, or fix my attentionI grew weary of Venice before I had been many hours in it, and determined to grasp at the very first opportunity that offered for my departure.

I had arranged, in my own mind, a plan to proceed to Latichea, a considerable sea-port town in Syria, and thence to Aleppo, whence, as it was a great Eastern mart, I entertained hopes that I should find a speedy, or at least a certain conveyance, by a caravan, across the desarts, to Bassorah, and little doubted but that I should find a vessel at some of the Venetian ports, either bound, or belonging to a sea-port of such commercial conse