DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0019
VENICE.
See Venice rise with endless beauties crown'd,
And as a world within herself is found :
Hail, Queen of Italy; for years to come
The mighty rival of immortal Rome !
Sannazaro.
To the eye of the stranger the aspect of Venice first pre-
sents itself like some vision of the deep, while her history
fills the mind with awe and wonder at the stern and feaiful
realities and heroic recollections with which it abounds.
She stands alone and unparalleled in the annals of Italy’s
tempestuous republics,—those hypocrites of liberty, which
recoiled from foreign despotism only the more effectually
to exalt themselves, by harassing and oppressing each
other. While torn by internal factions and successive
revolutions, the rest of Italy wielded at will their fierce
democracies, Venice preserved unshaken her “ high and
palmy state,” based on the deep, invisible foundations of
her more than Machiavellian system,—the combination
of petty tyrants, which, unlike that of slaves, seldom fails
to accomplish the objects it has in view.
The splendour and the power of aristocracy were never
more terribly developed than when the noon-tide of Vene-
tian prosperity brought into serpent vigour and activity
the policy of her secret tribunals, and carried terror into
the hearts at once of her children and her foes. To the
inquiring and philosophic reader no government supplies
See Venice rise with endless beauties crown'd,
And as a world within herself is found :
Hail, Queen of Italy; for years to come
The mighty rival of immortal Rome !
Sannazaro.
To the eye of the stranger the aspect of Venice first pre-
sents itself like some vision of the deep, while her history
fills the mind with awe and wonder at the stern and feaiful
realities and heroic recollections with which it abounds.
She stands alone and unparalleled in the annals of Italy’s
tempestuous republics,—those hypocrites of liberty, which
recoiled from foreign despotism only the more effectually
to exalt themselves, by harassing and oppressing each
other. While torn by internal factions and successive
revolutions, the rest of Italy wielded at will their fierce
democracies, Venice preserved unshaken her “ high and
palmy state,” based on the deep, invisible foundations of
her more than Machiavellian system,—the combination
of petty tyrants, which, unlike that of slaves, seldom fails
to accomplish the objects it has in view.
The splendour and the power of aristocracy were never
more terribly developed than when the noon-tide of Vene-
tian prosperity brought into serpent vigour and activity
the policy of her secret tribunals, and carried terror into
the hearts at once of her children and her foes. To the
inquiring and philosophic reader no government supplies