ever know a man who after three basins | soup is preferred to ox-tail soup, and in of turtle cared for a fourth?"

get little except tripe de roche to eat. it hardly seemed possible that he would Under these circumstances the worn and be able to consume any more; but the wearied wanderers found that a mile a day worthy Russian admiral, to test him, gave was as much as their feeble strength the savage a thick porridge of rice boiled could accomplish. One of the party, with three pounds of butter, weighing Michel, a half-breed Iroquis, continued together twenty-eight pounds. The glut strong and active while his companions ton sat down to this abundant banquet, were dying around him, but afterwards it although he had just partaken of breakwas discovered that he had been living on fast, and, without stirring from the spot or the flesh of the dead, killing when neces. showing any sign of inconvenience, got sity arose one of the emaciated and through the whole. Captain Cochrane enfeebled companions of his march. adds that a good large calf, weighing two In his savage condition, man, when he hundred pounds, will just make a meal for can get food, will eat till nature rebels, four or five Yakuts, and that he has seen and he cannot contain more; indeed, it is three of them consume a whole reindeer one of the most unamiable traits of savat one meal. Not to be too hard on these ages that, while they will cheerfully en- unsophisticated children of nature, I must dure great hardships and privations from say that the feats of English working which there is no escape, they will, on the men on their annual club feast-day, would other hand, eat to repletion when the surpass belief: a leg of mutton has not opportunity presents. In violent con- been found too much for the requirements trast, therefore, to the instances I have of one man. The late Dr. Darwin, of given of extreme privation, I shall cite a Shrewsbury, the father of the illustrious few of just as remarkable excess. The Charles Darwin, had the local reputation Hottentots, Bushmen, and savage South of being a glutton, and is reported to have African races generally are enormous glut- called a goose a favorite Salop dishtons. "Ten of them," says Barrow, "ate," an inconvenient one, as being too much in my presence, the whole of an ox all for one and not enough for two." but the hind legs in three days, and the To conclude, strange fashions are not three Bosjesmans that accompanied my confined to our own age or country. wagon devoured a sheep on one occasion | Holinshed, the famous and amusing in less than twenty-four hours." In cold chronicler of the sixteenth century, comclimates such feats as these would only ments severely upon the manners of the be trifles, and Parry and Ross have re- English of his day. He tells us that "in corded cases that, were they not well number of dishes and changes of meat attested, would pass belief. Sir Edward the nobility of England (whose cooks are Parry once tried the capacity of an for the most part Frenchmen and foreignEskimo scarcely full grown, and this ers) do most exceed; till there is no day interesting young savage contrived in in manner that passeth over their heads, twenty-four hours to devour four pounds wherein they have not only beef, mutton, four ounces of the raw, hard-frozen flesh veal, lamb, kid, pork, cony, capon, pig, or of a seahorse, the same quantity of it so many of them as the season yieldeth, boiled, one pound twelve ounces of bread but also some portion of the red and faland bread dust, a pint and a quarter of low deer, beside variety of fish and wild rich gravy soup, a tumbler of strong fowl, and thereto sundry other delicates grog, three wineglasses of raw spirit, and wherein the sweet hand of the seafaring nine pints of water. Sir John Ross in Portingale is not wanting, so that for a deed believed that the daily rations of man to dine with one of them and to taste an Eskimo were twenty pounds of flesh of every dish that standeth before him, is and blubber, but, in extenuation of so enor- rather to yield unto a conspiracy with a mous a consumption as this, the severity great deal of meat for the speedy suppresof the climate must be taken into account.sion of natural health than the use of a Perhaps the most astounding example of necessary meal to satisfy himself with a inhuman gluttony recorded is that by competent repast to sustain his body Captain Cochrane, on the authority of the Russian admiral Saritcheff, who was told that one of the Yakuts had consumed the hind quarter of a large ox in twentyfour hours, together with twenty pounds of fat and a proportionate quantity of melted butter. As the man had already gorged himself in this disgusting fashion,

withal." Much the same fashion is kept up to this day, and public banquets and the sumptuous tables of the opulent abound in all that can charm the eye and tempt the palate, and, let me add, lay the foundation of long and severe illness. How strange the contrast between this reckless profusion and the simplicity of

some mediæval saint, whose diet was spare and plain to a degree, or of him, greater than any of the prophets, who did his glorious life-work on a sparing allowance of locusts, wild honey, and

water!

From Murray's Magazine.
OLD VENICE.

of ocean wears; I rather propose to say a few words on the political constitution which governed her fortunes for a thousand years.

common

Historically, perhaps the most remarkable features of that strange city are the coherence and almost unbroken continuity of a polity, which existed through all the strain and trouble of the Middle Ages, amidst the intellectual revolution of the Renaissance, and even the vast changes of the eighteenth century. It is not a “VENEZIA ha saputo trovar modo che hundred years since Venice stood erect non uno, non pochi, non molti signoreg- not only in all the external magnificence giano; ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e of her material splendor, but in the apinsiememente un ottimo solo." "Venice parently unshaken strength of her laws has discovered a method of rule which is and public institutions. In the fifth cennot that of one, nor of a few, nor yet of tury some desolate mud-islands in the many; but under which many good citi- Hadriatic were appropriated by the paniczens, some few still better, and one best stricken refugees who fled from Attila of all, combine to govern the State." and thought that the end of human society This description, which reads like one of was at hand. On those islands the fisherthose eulogies, once so common on the men spread their nets, and the relics of British Constitution when the component the old Roman civilization found a shelter. elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and From these rough and rude beginnings democracy were believed to be equally came a polished and luxurious life; and blended and balanced — was there in truth on those banks and shaking piles in the ever such an age?- was written some midst of desolation and sea-waves grew three hundred years ago, and not ill ex-up a people that were destined to have presses the admiration that was for a long ideas and institutions of no time felt for Venice. For generations she order. At first these insignificant islands was the marvel of her contemporaries; were not worth the trouble of an invader's but her constitution has passed away attack; but before long they became suffinever to return, and to the vast majority ciently powerful and independent to defy of travellers and tourists who pass through the assaults of their enemies. her strange waterways, and who, intelli- early days Venice stood between envious gently or unintelligently, as the case may and conflicting powers the Eastern Embe, admire her stately buildings, it is a pire, with its great traditions and not inclosed chapter. They may know some significant strength, the growing but halfthing of her pictures or her architecture, barbarous West, and the popes of Rome; but most of her history and almost all her policy at times wavered and inclined knowledge of her constitution have passed from one to the other, but she never surinto forgetfulness. And yet, with one rendered herself to any patron or commighty exception, that constitution has petitor. Her independence, which the had since the Christian era no European fresh sea-breeze seemed to fan into vigorparallel or compeer in efficiency or endur- ous and self-conscious life, was her first and constant object. During the ninth and tenth centuries the connection with Constantinople was close, and Eastern wares found a ready market in Venice. The wife of one doge was the daughter of the emperor of Constantinople, and the chroniclers record how the simpler tastes of the young republic were shocked by her perfumed baths, and the golden fork with which she ate her food. In this connection, and in the titular honors bestowed by the Byzantine court upon some of the early doges, some have seen an unquestionable evidence of the subjection of Venice to the East; but if it were so, it was very temporary, and, in the words of

ance.

In many of its main characteristics the Venetian republic reflected or imitated the earlier Roman commonwealth from which she claimed descent; she gave birth to no great writers or poets like Florence; but she produced a race of statesmen who preserved from age to age her liberties, when every other State in northern Italy lost or surrendered them.

I will not dwell here on the wonderful beauty of that bright emanation of the Hadriatic, which even in her decay has all the glamor of romance about her; she has been abundantly described at every hour of the day or night, in all the many moods and aspects which such a child VOL. LXVII. 3460

LIVING AGE.

In her

the historian, "the bands of dependence | eral good-will of all classes. During the were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambi- long period that that constitution lasted, tion of Venice and the weakness of Con- there were moments and opportunities, stantinople."

when, if there had been any rooted or Amid the crimes and ingratitude and strong hatred of the institutions under selfishness that tarnish Venetian policy which they lived, one or other class of the there is nothing more remarkable than the people might have broken up the exquipersistence and courage with which, in sitely complicated fabric of Venetian polreverses and danger, she clung to her in- ity. The early days of the republic were dependence and refused to bend to any doubtless stormy, and doges repeatedly foreign master. In this she stands abso- met a violent death in the bloody struglutely alone. Neither literature nor art, gles for power; but when once the constinor the splendor of romance nor the con- tution was accepted the people never scious sense of inherited liberties, availed revolutionized it—they never made any to save the republics of northern Italy. serious attempt to do so; and the more One by one they succumbed to the temp. that I have read of the much-abused Venetations and the difficulties of the time, and tian republic, the more I have been led to gave themselves up to some despot. the conclusion that, severe and restrictive Venice alone remained self-governing as its system undoubtedly was, the presand independent, unscathed by foreign sure was less than existed under most usurper, unsubdued by emperor, uncajoled other contemporary governments - perby pope, uninfluenced by great baron or haps not more than is incidental to any mercenary captain, untouched by Eastern government which has the elements of or Western powers. Alone, too, she ob- permanence and stability in it. served a steady and continuous policy where all around her was variable and uncertain. She was ready to make common cause with Europe against the Turk if Europe was really in earnest; but was equally resolved not to quarrel needlessly with a great power conterminous to her own possessions. Around her was a maze of intrigue, treaties of plunder and spoliation, forming, breaking, re-forming, as chance or ambition on the mainland dictated; sometimes she was courted; sometimes, as in the League of Cambray, she was the object of secret and treacherous attack; but her rulers never faltered in courage or wavered in policy. Nor were great dangers wanting. They suffered calamitous reverses by sea; they experienced great defeats on land; they were blockaded by hostile fleets till hope itself well-nigh abandoned them; they experienced even the risks of secret conspiracy and rebellion; but the fabric of the Vene-lic administration at home or abroad there tian constitution remained apparently unshaken through every trial-its years counted by centuries, and its visible honors undimmed almost to the very close of its public life. That this was in a great measure due to her insular position is true; but insularity alone neither would nor could have preserved Venice through the long centuries of lawless might and unscrupulous ambition, which tore Europe, and particularly Italy, into pieces. Something else there must have been to give this remarkable vitality; and that something was found in a powerful and efficient constitution based upon the gen

The tide of popular opinion in these days runs in the opposite direction to that in which Venetian polity flowed. The drift of all government now is popular in the widest sense of the word the forms under which it is conducted are essentially democratic - the type is on a very large scale. In Venice everything was exactly the reverse of this. In size she bore no similarity to the colossal populations of our day, in name she was a republic, and through a long period of her existence the | popular element counted for much, though it was so conjoined with other elements that it was never in a position of command. Even at a comparatively later time, when the constitution assumed a more restricted form and the doge elect was presented to the citizens, there was a recognition of the people's consent in the formula, "This is your doge, if it so pleases you.' But in the realities of pub

was from a comparatively early period no room for the fluctuations of popular indecision; the ship of the State was steered by statesmen who knew no variations of policy, and subordinated every public and private consideration to the general wellbeing. Such policy may be impossible at the end of the nineteenth century; it may be at variance with modern ideas and there is probably not a politician now bold enough to compromise his orthodoxy by an approval of a constitution which has been so branded and stigmatized as has that of Venice. Yet for all this, it is impossible, as a matter of history, to

deny that government in Venice was through a period of time-by the side of which our modern Parliamentarism is as the creature of a day — quite as efficient and possibly even as popular as any of the systems of administration which we now see around us.

To visit Venice then-to navigate her narrow canals, where the old palaces seem to grow out of the water; to wander round the Sala del Consiglio, to see the rooms where the Council of Ten decided in secret on affairs of life and death; to breathe the fresh sea-breeze which brought into port the galleys laden with Eastern commerce, or crowned with victory, as on that famous evening when Petrarch saw them glide alongside the quays with laurelled masts and shouting crew and rejoicing people at the glad news of the reduction of Candia -all this not only recalls the varied his tory of the great capital, with its stirring events in war and peace, but it seems also to call up the political constitution, which made this splendid life possible. Men make the constitutions of States, but the constitutions of States also make the citizens who grow up under them; they react on each other; and Venetian history could never have been written but for the wonderful constitution by which her sons were governed and moulded.

ence; she preserved her independence and strengthened her position amid the wars which wrecked the liberties of Florence, Milan, and Genoa; she grew in splendor of architecture and gorgeousness of art until she became the wonder of the ruler kingdoms of Europe. That oligarchy was a strange phenomenon to contemporaries, and in the eyes of subsequent generations it has seemed an unlovely creation. It was organized on so intricate a system of checks and counter-checks, and elections and ballots, that to the student it has all the appearance of a Chinese puzzle; but its complexity did not diminish its efficiency. It was secret in its councils, certain in its instruments, unhesitating in its actions. "Shall it be good-morning or good-evening to you, illustrious sir?". said Carmagnola to the doge, when in the early morning he met him and the councillors, who had all night been discussing the affairs of State, and particularly the course to be taken with himself; to whom the prince replied, smiling, "that among the many serious matters which had been talked of in that long discussion, nothing had been oftener mentioned than his Carmagnola's name." They had indeed been debating of him, of his arrest and torture and terrible death; but the smiling answer awoke no suspicion in the mind of The aristocracy of Venice ruled with the great captain, and only veiled the absolute power, and that power only coming tragedy. The secret never tranceased in the presence of Napoleon's le- spired; the tongue of the babbler had no gions in 1797. Aristocratic rule came part in Venetian policy, and the dark early in Venetian history; but it was not counsels of these stern judges were never at first a jealous or exclusive aristocracy; betrayed. Even in the days when these tastes were simple, all shared in the ad- tragedies were enacted, and when men ventures of a seafaring life, and commerce were much more familiar than they now and war were the education and the insep-are with deeds of blood, such action on arable conditions of the governing class. the part of the governors of the StateIn those days the Great Council was the swift, dark, relentless sent a thrill of basis of the constitution; and through it terror through the body of the people; was the approach to all honor and fame. measured by the lights and judgments of At first it was open to the whole of the our age, they naturally seem horrible; citizen nobility of the republic; but a time and the Council of Ten, the three inquiscame when a party in the State usurped itors, the lion's mouth, the detestable and "closed" the Council, and thus be- system of delation, the secret trial, the came the sole depositaries of all authority. torture-chamber, and the fatal spot of exeIt was the change from a less to a more cution between the two granite columns, aristocratic regimen, from the rule of an conjure up before the minds of most nineopen aristocracy to that of a comparatively teenth-century readers the picture of some close oligarchy; but, unlike other oligar- devilish organization without a redeeming chies, this one lasted for nearly five hun- feature. But this is not an entirely just dred years. Under their rule some of the judgment. The moral sentiments of one greatest acts of peace and war were generation are not a fair measure of the achieved; Venice triumphed over her acts of another and an earlier one; and I great rival in the West; she became mis- confess that, revolting as was much of the tress of her possessions on terra firma; State machinery employed by the Veneshe fought her heroic way through the tian rulers, I do not trace in their actions desperate siege that threatened her exist- cruelty so much as an inexorable and piti