" This seems to have been their condition,
though perhaps gradually growing in commercial importance, until at the
beginning of the eighth century the concentration of political authority
in the hands of the first doge, and the recognition of the Rialto
cluster of islands as the capital of the confederacy, started the
republic on a career of success and victory, in which for seven
centuries she met no lasting check.
But this lies far beyond the limit of our present subject. It must be
again said that we have not to think of "the pleasant place of all
festivity," but of a few huts among the sand-banks, inhabited by Roman
provincials, who mournfully recall their charred and ruined habitations
by the Brenta and the Piave. The sea alone does not constitute their
safety. If that were all, the pirate ships of the Vandal Genseric might
repeat upon their poor dwellings all the terror of Attila. But it is in
their amphibious life, in that strange blending of land and sea which is
exhibited by the lagunes, that their safety lies. Only experienced
pilots can guide a vessel of any considerable draught through the mazy
channels of deep water which intersect these lagoons; and should they
seem to be in imminent peril from the approach of an enemy, they will
defend themselves not like the Dutch by cutting the dikes which
barricade them from the ocean, but by pulling up the poles which even
those pilots need to indicate their pathway through the waters.
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