e more subtlety
in debate, when government problems should later absorb his gifts.

But if, like other golden youth of his time, he was like a Greek in
possession of their liquid tongue and in a mastery of oratory that
filled the soul of Giustinian Giustiniani with satisfaction, the young
patrician himself had acquired this learning, less with a thought of one
day shining in the Senate than because it pleased him as a touch of
finish. He was, in some sort, a reaction from the proud and typical
Venetian so ably represented by the elder Giustinian, who claimed
unchallenged descent from the Emperor Justinian, upheld by the
traditions of that long line of ancestry and by the memory of many
honorable offices most honorably discharged by numerous members of his
house. Marcantonio, on the contrary, was handsome, winning,
pleasure-loving--after an innocent fashion, which brought some sneers
from his compeers, the gay "company of the hose;" but he thought life
not made for pain, nor ugliness, nor hardness of any sort; he was bred
to luxury, yet his intellectual inheritance made learning easy for him;
he was many sided and vacillating, an exquisite in taste and the science
of trifles. His affectionate nature, repressed and chilled, refused
absolute subjection to that purpose which the elder Giustinian held
relentlessly before him; he wished to live for himself a little, and not
wholly for Venice. He was an embodiment of that late time of Venetian
culture when its magnificence, its artistic and intellectual development
had touched their height, and the hint of decadence shadowed its
splendor with a pathos unguessed except by the thoughtful few.

He had dabbled a little in costly manuscripts--a taste for an exquisite
in those days, when Venice was the envy of the world for the marvels of
her press; and already he possessed a volume or two, for his cabinet,
from the atelier of Aldus Manutius--that famous edition of Aristotle,
the first ever printed in Greek, with the Aldine mark of anchor and
dolphin on the title-page. But a volume more precious still, with its
dainty finish and piquant history, conferred distinction, it was said,
among the literati, upon its youthful owner; this was no less a treasure
than that first copy of "Le Cose Volgare di Messer Francesco Petrarca,"
most exquisitely printed in type modeled after the poet's own elegant
handwriting, and the volume had been superintended by many learned
heads,--awaited with imp