lexandria. For two hundred and fifty years, that is
to say for eight generations, the refugees on the islands of the
Adriatic prolonged an obscure and squalid existence--fishing, salt
manufacturing, damming out the waves with wattled vine-branches, driving
piles into the sand-banks, and thus gradually extending the area of
their villages. Still these were but fishing villages, loosely
confederated together, loosely governed, poor and insignificant, so that
the anonymous geographer of Ravenna, writing in the seventh century, can
only say of them, "In the country of Venetia there are some few islands
which are inhabited by men." This seems to have been their condition,
though perhaps gradually growing in commercial importance, until at the
beginning of the eighth century the concentration of political authority
in the hands of the first doge, and the recognition of the Rialto
cluster of islands as the capital of the confederacy, started the
republic on a career of success and victory, in which for seven
centuries she met no lasting check.

But this lies far beyond the limit of our present subject. It must be
again said that we have not to think of "the pleasant place of all
festivity," but of a few huts among the sand-banks, inhabited by Roman
provincials, who mournfully recall their charred and ruined habitations
by the Brenta and the Piave. The sea alone does not constitute their
safety. If that were all, the pirate ships of the Vandal Genseric might
repeat upon their poor dwellings all the terror of Attila. But it is in
their amphibious life, in that strange blending of land and sea which is
exhibited by the lagunes, that their safety lies. Only experienced
pilots can guide a vessel of any considerable draught through the mazy
channels of deep water which intersect these lagoons; and should they
seem to be in imminent peril from the approach of an enemy, they will
defend themselves not like the Dutch by cutting the dikes which
barricade them from the ocean, but by pulling up the poles which even
those pilots need to indicate their pathway through the waters. There,
then, engaged in their humble, beaver-like labors, we leave for the
present the Venetian refugees from the rage of Attila.

But even while protesting, it is impossible not to let into our minds
some thought of what those desolate fishing villages will one day
become. The dim religious light, half revealing the slowly gathered
glories of St. Mark's; the Duca