XVII.

an originality about these Doges which is ever CHAPTER pleasant. The tragedies of Marino Faliero and the Two Foscari are well known. There is scarcely one of the Doges who would not make a first-rate character in a drama. In almost all the leading incidents we are charmed with a certain simplicity. A Doge is elected, and when he appears in public his father, insisting on his paternal superiority, refuses to unbonnet before him. It is only by the trick of exhibiting in the ducal berretta the image of a saint that the father is at last induced to give the appearance of homage to his son. Again, a Doge's son is in prison, is in great suffering, begs to be released, finds his father unrelenting, though not as a father, but as chief magistrate, and dies in his dungeon that the laws of Venice may be observed. It is out of nature so pure and strength so great as this that true nobility proceeds. Read of Giovanni and Andrea Dandolo, read of Pietro Contarini, who was literally forced to leave his privacy to assume the berretta. These were great, peculiar men. Imagine for a moment Pietro Ziani, with his kind heart and hot temper, his fine face and prodigious memory, receiving the ambassadors at St. Mark's. On one occasion he receives two-and-twenty envoys, bids each of them speak in succession, while he throws himself back in his seat, shuts his eyes, and appears to be dozing. After each has said his say the

XVII.

And in pre

CHAPTER Doge comes to himself again, takes each of the envoys in order, and gives each his reply from sence of memory. The Doges are all men of marked such men it individuality, sometimes, as in the case of Ziani, tending to eccentricity. And in presence of

must be

denied that

commerce

enfeebles

character.

That the position and

the indivi

dual is

altered in

such men we are driven to the denial of Hare's and Phillimore's assertion that commerce enfeebles character, or that whatever feebleness of character we may find in modern life is due to the predominance of the trading spirit.

That the position of the individual has come character of to be altered in modern society is certainly one of the incidents of commercial enterprise; but it modern so- is not the result of a sordid propensity. Increase ciety is due of commerce, for example, implies the increased prevalence of law; and law makes short work of heroics. In reading history, one constantly

to a variety

of causes,

as, for example, to

the preva

law.

lence of comes upon characters that are nowadays almost unknown in public life-hot, angry men, who cannot be controlled, and whom it is death to offend. They might flourish in an age when might was right; they wither in an age of law. At the Council of Constance, the Archbishops of Milan and Pisa sprang from their seats in the midst of debate, closed like wild beasts, and nearly throttled each other. No such passion dare show itself in a modern convocation. The persons who are described as yielding to their passions in former times are chiefly men in authority-kings or barons. These have less liberty

XVII.

now than they formerly had. The liberty of CHAPTER their subjects and lieges has been raised on the circumscription of their power-therefore on the limitation of their excesses. If a baron now were ever so passionate, his anger would not be so terrible, and therefore not so noticeable, as it was in days when he could hang and imprison at pleasure, and when he thought no more of running a retainer through the body in a sudden fit of rage than he would now do of dismissing him with a month's wages. So to limit the energy of the passions is to shear Samson of his locks, and to reduce the hero to the level of an ordinary individual. It is not commerce which thus acts; although the trading spirit is one of the most potent influences in the modern civilization which represses the so-called hero and encourages the private individual.

to the diffusion of knowledge.

Again, it is one of the incidents of commerce And again that the intercourse of man with man should be increased; and before such intercourse the sense of the marvellous pales. The hero is a moral giant, and we become soon incredulous of moral as of other giants. I have several times in the course of this volume referred to M. de Montalembert and his reverence for the monks. He would not recall the Middle Ages, but he thinks that society was-thanks to the monks-better then than now; more moral, more spiritually enlightened. He gives up the priests. He does

bert thinks

among the

men.

CHAPTER not think that the secular clergy were then so XVII. good as now, but "there were more saints, more Montalem- monks, and, above all, more believers than in the monks our days." It is not worth while to argue the greatest of point, but I cannot help recalling another of his statements, which has a resemblance to those of Hare and Phillimore,-that the Middle Ages were not only more fertile in saints and monks, but also in men, than these modern days. I do not wish to speak disrespectfully of the monks. For several centuries past Europe has known the monastic institution only in its degeneracy, and we have quite forgotten what it was in its prime. In the day of its glory, the cloister was the favoured home of piety and learning, all the arts of peace, and all the blessings of religion. We have come to know it as a sink of corruption, as a den of laziness, as the living grave in which human decrepitude is content to hide itself. Our connot to be tempt for the monks of later days has been so strong, that we have been unjust to the simpleminded men who in a former age, in an age of brute force and brutal appetites, kept alive in their hallowed retreats the flickering flame of religion and the tender seeds of knowledge. Roughly speaking, the monks came into Western Europe with the barbarians. This is the great fact which explains the good and the evil which belonged to them. They were a barbarous remedy for a barbarous disease. When Huns and

They are

certainly

depreciated.

XVII.

Vandals poured upon the pleasant South, and CHAPTER
spread themselves over Europe, the evils of their
inroad were much more manifest than the good
which followed from it. We know well how
much modern Europe owes to these Goths, who
were our progenitors, and who easily overbore
the effete civilization of pagan Rome with that
youthful energy and animal perfection which is
the best of all soils, that sentiment of honour
which ever points upward, and that respect for
womanhood which is the preserving salt of
society. But we know also their original igno-
rance, their coarseness, their brutality. In one
word, they were barbarians, full of impulses
which they never questioned and passions which
they never controlled. The monks converted They did a

the heathens and trained them in the arts
of peace.
M. de Montalembert indeed com-
plains that the defence of the monks is put
on the wrong ground when we
dwell on
the services which they have rendered to the
sciences, to letters, to the fine and to the useful
arts. This, he says, is to praise what is merely
incidental at the expense of what is essential.
Prayer was the great function of the monks, and
we are favoured with the opinion of the Bishop
of Orleans, that "prayer equals and surpasses
sometimes the power of God. It triumphs over
His will, His wrath, and even over His justice."
If the bishop's view be correct, of course St.

great work.