114 THE STONES OF VENICE II. PRIDE OF STATE

no spring nor motion in its body, give it the appearance of a dog begging. The inscriptions under the two principal statues are as follows:

“Bertucius Valier, Duke,

Great in wisdom and eloquence,

Greater in his Hellespontic victory,

Greatest in the Prince his son,

Died in the year 1658.”

“Elisabeth Quirina,

The wife of Silvester,

Distinguished by Roman virtue,

By Venetian piety,

And by the Ducal crown,

Died 1708.”

The writers of this age were generally anxious to make the world aware that they understood the degrees of comparison, and a large number of epitaphs are principally constructed with this object (compare, in the Latin, that of the Bishop of Paphos, given above): but the latter of these epitaphs is also interesting, from its mention, in an age now altogether given up to the pursuit of worldly honour, of that “Venetian piety” which once truly distinguished the city from all others; and of which some form and shadow, remaining still, served to point an epitaph, and to feed more cunningly and speciously the pride which could not be satiated with the sumptuousness of the sepulchre.

§ 85. Thus far, then, of the second element of the Renaissance spirit, the Pride of State; nor need we go farther to learn the reason of the fall of Venice. She was already likened in her thoughts, and was therefore to be likened in her ruin, to the Virgin of Babylon. The Pride of State and the Pride of Knowledge were no new passions: the sentence against them had gone forth from everlasting. “Thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever, so that thou didst not lay these things to thine heart. ... Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon

[Version 0.04: March 2008]