hem, and the Doge, Andrea Contarini,
informed him of the demands of the people, and the necessities of the
state, whose only hope of safety was reposed in his efforts, and who
implored him to forget the indignities he had endured in her service. "I
have submitted," replied the magnanimous republican, "I have submitted
to your deliberations without complaint; I have supported patiently the
pains of imprisonment, for they were inflicted at your command: this is
no time to inquire whether I deserved them--the good of the republic may
have seemed to require it, and that which the republic resolves is
always resolved wisely. Behold me ready to lay down my life for the
preservation of my country." Pisani was appointed generalissimo, and, by
his exertions, in conjunction with those of Carlo Zeno, the Venetians
soon recovered the ascendancy over their maritime rivals.

The Italian communities were no less unjust to their citizens than the
Greek republics. Liberty, both with the one and the other, seems to have
been a national, not an individual object: and, notwithstanding the
boasted _equality before the laws_, which an ancient Greek writer[609]
considered the great distinctive mark between his countrymen and the
barbarians, the mutual rights of fellow citizens seem never to have been
the principal scope of the old democracies. The world may have not yet
seen an essay by the author of _The Italian Republics_, in which the
distinction between the liberty of former states, and the signification
attached to that word by the happier constitution of England, is
ingeniously developed. The Italians, however, when they had ceased to be
free, still looked back with a sigh upon those times of turbulence, when
every citizen might rise to a share of sovereign power, and have never
been taught fully to appreciate the repose of a monarchy. Sperone
Speroni, when Francis Maria II. Duke of Rovere proposed the question,
"which was preferable, the republic or the principality--the perfect and
not durable, or the less perfect and not so liable to change," replied,
"that our happiness is to be measured by its quality, not by its
duration; and that he preferred to live for one day like a man, than for
a hundred years like a brute, a stock, or a stone." This was thought,
and called a _magnificent_ answer down to the last days of Italian
servitude.[610]

20.

And the crown
Which Petra