rated by the papers which belong to the Venetian
department for foreign affairs. Nor are the papers which relate to the
home government of the Republic less copious and valuable. Each
magistracy has its own series of documents, the daily record of its
proceedings: in this we find the whole of that elaborate machinery of
State laid bare before us in all its intricacy of detail; and we are
enabled to study the construction, the origin, development, and
ossification, of one of the most rigid and enduring constitutions that
the world has ever seen; a constitution so strong in its component
parts, so compact in its rib-work, that it sufficed to preserve a
semblance of life in the body of the Republic long after the heart and
brain had ceased to beat.

Admirable as are the preservation and order of these masses of State
papers, it is not to be expected that each series, each magisterial
archive, should be complete. There are many broad lacunae, especially in
the earlier period, which must ever be a cause for regret: for Venice
growing is a more attractive and profitable subject than Venice dying.
During the nine hundred and eighty-seven years that the Government of
the Republic held its seat in Venice, the State papers passed through
many dangers from fire, revolution, neglect, or carelessness. When we
recal the fires of 1230, 1479, 1574, and 1577, it is rather matter for
congratulation that so much has escaped, than for surprise that so much
has been destroyed. The losses would, undoubtedly, have been much more
severe had all the papers and documents been preserved in one place, as
they are now. But the Venetians stored the archives of the various
magistracies either at the offices of those magistrates, or in some
public building especially set apart for the purpose. The Secret
Chancellery, which was always an object of great solicitude, containing
as it did all the more private papers of the State, was deposited in a
room on the second floor of the Ducal Palace. Many of the criminal
records belonging to the Council of Ten were stored in the Piombi under
the roof of the Palace; and the famous adventurer Casanova relates how
he beguiled some of his prison hours by reading the trial of a Venetian
nobleman, which he found among other papers piled at the end of the
corridor where he was allowed to take exercise. Soon after the fall of
the Republic, the following disposition of the papers was made. The
political archive was store