Did the citizens of Constantinople confine their trade to the Islands of the Archipelago, and the adjacent coast of Asia?
No, they took a wider range; and, following the course which the ancients had marked out, imported the productions of the East Indies from Alexandria. When Egypt was torn from the Roman Empire by the Arabians, the industry of the Greeks discovered a new channel by which the productions of India might be conveyed to Constantinople.
Did not the Barbarians, after a while, turn their attention to Navigation and Commerce?
No sooner were the brave among these nations well settled in their new provinces—some in Gaul, as the Franks; others in Spain, as the Goths; and others in Italy, as the Lombards,—than they began to learn the advantages of these arts, and the proper methods of managing them, from the people they had subdued; and that with so much success, that they even improved upon them, and set on foot new institutions for their advantage. To the Lombards, in particular, is usually ascribed the invention and use of banks, book-keeping, and exchanges. Thus the people of Italy, and particularly those of Venice and Genoa, have the glory of restoring to Europe the advantages that had been destroyed by their own ravages.
Institutions, laws, regulations.
Exchange, a species of mercantile transactions by which the debts due to persons at a distance are paid by order, draft, or bill of exchange, without the transmission either of money or goods.
Who were the Franks?
A people who settled in Gaul; from them it took the name of Franconia, or France.
Who were the Goths?