w York: D. Van Nostrand.

Such was Salamis.

When his narrative reaches the navies of the Italian republics of the
middle ages, however, our author seems all aglow with love of his theme,
and well he may be! Venice, in her day of glory, possessed the finest
navy of the times. Captain Pantero Pantera, writing of it in 1614,
speaks with enthusiastic admiration of its fine arsenals, numerous
stores, and numbers of workmen on permanent pay. These things, he says,
were always most "carefully attended to by the republic of Venice, which
indeed in this respect not only equals, but excels all the naval powers
of the Mediterranean." There is so much of romance and poetry, indeed,
in connection with the naval history of Venice, that it requires a cool
head and steady hand to steer along the courses of sober truth; but that
truth we must not be surprised to find, in that clime of sunshine and
beauty, often out-vieing the wildest efforts of fiction. Very similar is
the history of the sister republic of Genoa. Unfortunately these lovely
sisters were great rivals, and during wars which covered a period of
about one hundred and thirty years wasted each other's strength and
resources without achieving a particle of good to either. As a judgment,
it would almost seem, for such stupendous and long-continued folly, the
seeds of destruction were planted without their own bosoms. Both
attained the pinnacle of earthly glory, but from both issued forth a
wanderer who was destined in time to set his seal upon the fate of his
native city. The Genoese Columbus, followed by the Venetian Cabot, led
the way to the great western continent which, by diverting the course of
trade and commerce from its old channels, caused the loss of wealth and
the final decay of the Italian republic. The spirit of discovery once
aroused, other navigators followed, and Vasco da Gama, by opening the
road to the East Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, so injured
the trade of Venice with the east as to render her downfall inevitable.
But the history of the old sea kings of the north, and the tracing of
their line of descent through old England to the hardy seaman of New
England, is still more interesting to our naval students.

The Vikings--"sons of the fiords"--were undoubtedly the most arrant
pirates of all history. They were the dread of all Europe. "A furore
Normanorum librera nos Domine," prayed the Church throughout
Christendom. Many of these piratical p