Care for the
people, in peace as well as in war, was characteristic of this
government, and its attention to the wounded, even to those of the
enemy, excited the admiration of other States.
Public institutions of every kind found in Venice their pattern; the
pensioning of retired servants was carried out systematically, and
included a provision for widows and orphans. Wealth, political
security, and acquaintance with other countries, had matured the
understanding of such questions. These slender fair- haired men, with
quiet cautious steps and deliberate speech, differed but slightly in
costume and bearing from one another; ornaments, especially pearls,
were reserved for the women and girls. At that time the general
prosperity, notwithstanding the losses sustained from the Turks, was
still dazzling; the stores of energy which the city possessed, and the
prejudice in its favour diffused throughout Europe, enabled it at a
much later time to survive the heavy blows inflicted upon it by the
discovery of the sea route to the Indies, by the fall of the Mamelukes
in Egypt, and by the war of the League of Cambrai.
Sabellico, born in the neighbourhood of Tivoli, and accustomed to the
frank loquacity of the scholars of his day, remarks elsewhere with some
astonishment, that the young nobles who came of a morning to hear his
lectures could not be prevailed upon to enter into political
discussions: 'When I ask them what people think, say, and expect about
this or that movement in Italy, they all answer with one voice that
they know nothing about the matter.
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