the city have been sold and dismantled, till, at length, the Austrian government interfered to stay the work of destruction. At the close of the seventeenth century, the population of Venice amounted to nearly 200,000 souls. At the period of the extinction of the republic it was 140,000, which, within thirty years, was reduced to 100,000; so rapid is the pestilence of political degradation. Truly, indeed, has it been said of Venice, in the language of Scripture, that she " dies daily.”

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Some idea may be formed of the degradation of the Venetian nobility from the fact, that the mendicants of Venice venture to assume the title, and doubtless expect that their pretensions will be credited. "The number of indigent persons in Venice," says an American traveller, calling themselves noble, is noticed by almost every traveller. I have been repeatedly stopped by genteellooking persons in the Place of St. Mark, calling themselves poveri nobili, who received with thankfulness the most trifling gratuity. In passing through the streets and public squares, my attention has been frequently arrested by decent females—their faces concealed by a veil, and kneeling for hours together: all these, as my guide informed me, were povere nobili Veneziane."

But even in the midst of their poverty, the gaiety of the Venetian temperament shines out. "From what you see of the Venetians in their favourite rendezvous of pleasure," says the writer just mentioned, "you would suppose them the happiest people in the world; but follow them to their homes, and the scene is entirely reversed. A wretched, half-furnished apartment, the windows of which look upon the sullen waters of a lonely

canal, whose solitude is interrupted only by the occasional appearance of a black gondola, is often the abode of some ruined family once high in the ranks of nobility. In a mansion whose appearance announces the interior of a palace, beauty and accomplishments are often found languishing in want, yet solacing their sad condition by those pleasures which Italy still yields to the imagination and the heart. The gay assemblies of St. Mark's Place in the evening; a musical party on the water; a trip to Padua along the pleasant banks of the Brenta, have the power of dissipating the gloom of adversity."

No one can leave Venice without acknowledging the beauty and feeling of Mr. Wordsworth's "Sonnet on the Extinction of the Venetian Republic."

"Once did she hold the gorgeous east in fee,
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth.
Venice, the eldest child of liberty-
She was a maiden city, bright and free:
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And when she took unto herself a mate,
She must espouse the everlasting sea.
And, what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great is pass'd away."