One more consideration is suggested to us by that which was the noblest
part of the work of Venice, the struggle which she maintained for
centuries, really in behalf of all Europe, against the Turk. Attila's
power was soon to pass away, but, in the ages that were to come, another
Turanian race was to arise, as brutal as the Huns, but with their
fierceness sharp-pointed and hardened into a far more fearful weapon of
offence by the fanaticism of Islam. These descendants of the kinsfolk of
Attila were the Ottomans, and but for the barrier which, like their own
_murazzi_ against the waves, the Venetians interposed against the
Ottomans, it is scarcely too much to say that half Europe would have
undergone the misery of subjection to the organized anarchy of the
Turkish pachas. The Tartar Attila, when he gave up Aquileia and her
neighbor cities to the tender mercies of his myrmidons, little thought
that he was but the instrument in an unseen Hand for hammering out the
shield which should one day defend Europe from Tartar robbers such as he
was. The Turanian poison secreted the future antidote to itself, and the
name of that antidote was Venice.
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