But as in individuals, so in countries. We go on increasing in health and strength up to a certain age, after which comes the inevitable decline. “First from age to age we ripe and ripe, and then from age to age we rot and rot.” The decline of Venice is soon told. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, and the discovery of the new Indian sea-routes were terrible blows to the republic, from which, indeed, it never recovered. The Turks, with whom the Venetians were always at war, proved in the end victorious, and took possession of the eastern colonies of the republic.
And then came the great shame of Venice’s history—the alliance with the Turk against the Christian powers, the sacrifice of Rhodes, and the selfish abandonment of that great Christian hero, Lisle Adam; while, as a modern writer says, “the Venetians and other merchants were trafficking their goods and their souls at the same time with the enemies of the Church, and dishonouring their Christian calling.” A sad Nemesis was, however, in store for Venice, and, notwithstanding her crimes, we cannot read unmoved of the last Doge embracing the banner of St. Mark and then flinging it into a grave over which a solemn funeral ceremony was performed. Napoleon, who regarded neither art, poetry, nor history, when they stood in the way of his ambition, was approaching Venice. Resistance was impossible, and the banner which had led the Venetians to so many victories must not fall into the hands of the invader, so, with tears and sighs, it was reverently placed in the grave.
(To be continued.)
UNCLE JASPER.
By ALICE KING.
CHAPTER III.
made my way forward as quickly as I could, endeavouring, as I went, to make believe in my own mind that I was not much frightened, and did not very much dislike the whole situation—in fact, that it was rather an amusing and interesting one. But, after all, it was an extremely poor, thin make-belief indeed. The darkness grew thicker and thicker, the outlines of surrounding objects more and more indistinct; the wind rose higher and higher, and went sweeping by with a wild, dreary wail; the rain began to stream down as if a couple of rivers or more were being emptied from the sky on to the earth. I had brought no waterproof with me, I had only on a mantle of light summer cloth, and, as well may be supposed, I was soon enjoying the comfortable certainty that I was getting wet through as rapidly as I could. Yes, there was no denying it; it would decidedly be better to be in bed than here, even if I was expecting next morning the arrival of the ugliest ogre uncle that ever appeared in a fairy tale.
I felt a most real and lively inclination to sit down and cry; but as there were some small shreds of heroism still hanging about me, I did not do it—I persevered onward, instead. Things were, however, becoming most uncompromisingly worse and worse. Hitherto there had been at the side of the road fences of some kind, the dim outlines of which had been, in a certain degree, a guide to me; but now I had got out on to an open common, where there was nothing round me save an expanse of what seemed immeasurable darkness, and where the wind and the rain beat upon me more violently and pitilessly than ever. I soon became aware, too, of another very unpleasant fact: I had evidently got off the road, for I could feel the damp, spongy-ground of the common underneath my feet. I tried to find my way back to it, but all in vain; I seemed only to get into wetter and less solid ground.
It was so dark now, I was so completely enveloped in thickest blackness, that I could not have seen even a stone wall had it been in front of me; but it would have been some consolation, some reassurance, only to have felt it when I stretched out my hand before me; instead of that, however, when I extended my arm it went groping about helplessly in illimitable space. The storm appeared to be finding a cruel pleasure in playing me all sorts of unkind tricks, for now it flung the folds of my mantle over my head, and now it poured a waterspout down my back. The ground under my feet was growing every minute more swampy, and sometimes I sank in ankle deep; two or three times I found that, by way of a little change, I had stepped into a gutter, which caused a refreshing shower of muddy water to come splashing upward to meet and mingle in friendly amity with the raindrops that pelted down from above. The sprites of earth and air may possibly have found much satisfaction in this meeting, but most decidedly I did not, nor did my luckless petticoats and stockings.