Time has since taught the world that Venice
continued this idle deception for ages after both reason and modesty
should have dictated its discontinuance; but, at the period of which we
write, that ambitious, crapulous, and factitious state was rather
beginning to feel the symptomatic evidence of its fading circumstances,
than to be fully conscious of the swift progress of a downward course.
In this manner do communities, like individuals, draw near their
dissolution, inattentive to the symptoms of decay, until they are
overtaken with that fate which finally overwhelms empires and their
power in the common lot of man.
The Bucentaur did not return directly to the quay, to disburden itself
of its grave and dignified load. The gaudy galley anchored in the centre
of the port, and opposite to the wide mouth of the great canal. Officers
had been busy, throughout the morning, in causing all the shipping and
heavy boats, of which hundreds lay in that principal artery of the city,
to remove from the centre of the passage, and heralds now summoned the
citizens to witness the regatta, with which the public ceremonies of the
day were to terminate.
Venice, from her peculiar formation and the vast number of her watermen,
had long been celebrated for this species of amusement. Families were
known and celebrated in her traditions for dexterous skill with the oar,
as they were known in Rome for feats of a far less useful and of a more
barbarous nature.
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