th Pole, Philip Sidney, John Harrington, to mention a few among the nobility, Linacre, Harvey, and perhaps Bacon, tto cite names illustrious in science, all visited the city in ere the lagoons and its famous University at Padua, while some remained in Venice. Bolingbroke's rival, Thomas ting Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, inal g Diaz ward se d eas Isle alle the nta CO di 84 'Toiled with works of war, retired himself To Italy, and there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth.' In the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo you may see The Venetian ambassador was a well-known figure We have seen, then, that between the Venetian Republic and the kingdom of England there existed several points of resemblance and of contact. The development of both was profoundly affected by geography, both enjoyed a virtual monopoly of one prime necessity; both created from a small nucleus a wide-flung overseas empire; both became great sea-powers and virtual masters of sea-borne trade. We should expect to find that these coincidences would tend to produce resemblances in type of citizen, in the growth of their respecftive constitutions, in their treatment of their empire, in lier the general character of their politics. And so we do. To begin with, both England and Venice can boast great sea-captains and adventurers, men who were bold sailors بست in as well as stout sea-fighters, men like the brothers who reach Iceland, Pigafetta, Magellan's right-hand on his circumnavigation of the globe, comparable our Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and all the Hak brotherhood, who mingled trading and singeing Spanish king's beard. The Cabots, whose monum crowns Brandon Hill at Bristol, came from Venice; t house stands at the end of the Riva, by the Ponte d Veneta Marina, In the annals of mighty travell men like Marco Polo, Caterino Zen, Giosafat Barb may fitly stand side by side with Captain Cook Mungo Park. Both nations developed a certain practical saga in dealing with the lives of their citizens. As early the middle of the 14th century, Venice had thought c load-line on their ships, and enforced its Plimsoll m for the protection of the sailor against the rapacity the ship-owner. A little later a Factory Act forb the employment of children under fourteen in indust which used quicksilver. The hospitals of Venice a London depended on voluntary contributions. Or, to turn to the constitutional side, though i England's glory that she is the mother of Parliame the home of the free electorate, while Venice es became, and consistently remained, a close oligarchy, undoubtedly as Disraeli (who by the way was a Venet Jew; his ancestors are buried in the Jews' cemet on the Lido) saw, the British Empire was virtuɛ governed by a close oligarchy of great land-owners dur the brilliant period of the Whig ascendancy. There one striking contrast, however, to be noted. While Venetian aristocracy by retiring from trade to la owning, by substituting the villa for the counting-hot ended by ruining themselves, the English aristocracy retiring from trade to the land, erected themselves in the ruling class for at least three hundred years; 1 reason lying, perhaps, in the fact of one essent difference between the two States: namely, that Engla was an island state her greatest industry was ag culture-while Venice was a city state with no territo immediately attached to it; and with trade as its ch source of wealth. The very success of both Venice a England in acquiring such vast over-seas dominio עוד lu the ther Hell lers Dar city Za drew down upon each a concentrated jealousy which ma endeavoured to tarnish the lustre of the achievement wit by accusations of unscrupulousness, greed, selfish egoism. Venice when she first became powerful in the Levant, during the twelfth century roused the hatred and suspicion of the Eastern Empire, and Eustathius, Bishop of Salonika, addressing the Emperor Manuel in 1174, calls Venice 'that bubble of the Adriatic, that water snake, that bull-frog of the mudbanks'; and another Bishop, addressing the Emperor Maximilian, during the war of Cambrai in 1510, uses almost identical and equally unepiscopal language when he calls Venice' resurgens et venenosissima Vipera,' that rising, crested, venomous viper. England is accustomed to 'perfide Albion,' the "nation of shopkeepers,' and even as recently as March 24 ari last, the 'Figaro' spoke with bitterness of 'selfish British Traders.' But it requires more than mere jealousy to account for the persistent animus against these two great sea-powers. Probably the truth is that both Venice and England were opportunist in their foreign policy; neither had a consistent, logical theory of conduct; both watched events, followed where they led, forced not the course of the river, and therefore drove their rivals mad by making it impossible for them to predict and forestall the respective lines of action. n y of rie The world has always taken two views of success: one, the general public, piazza view, is that nothing succeeds like success, that success is its own justification. As Byron has it, in his tragedy of 'Marino Faliero,' that their "They try the Cæsar or the Cataline By the true touchstone of desert-success.' The other view, held, I admit, chiefly by the unsuccessful, is that success will seldom bear looking into. However may be, both England and Venice were fully alive to the market-value of a good name; and if by chance apparently ambiguous though successful conduct was attacked by their enemies, they would both have replied, like the lady in Macchiavelli's 'Mandragola,' that as her fall had come about entirely against her will it was clearly the will of 'Providence.' But to quit these hardly seemly reflexions; the principle of the proper relations between the govern and the governed were alike in England and in Ven In both cases the Dominante, the ruling State, interfe as little as possible with the religion, local customs, { usages of its over-seas dependencies; and in the case both home and imperial policy the aim of Venice, expressed by the Venetian Senate, was the aim England; ut habeamus cor et amorem subditorum r trorum, that we may hold the heart and affection of peoples; our great Imperialist, Mr Chamberlain, quo and endorsed that sentiment in a speech at Glasg Both Venice and England reaped their reward in passionate attachment of their subjects. The mainlε possessions of Venice returned, spontaneously and gla to San Marco, after the wars of Cambrai; the over-s dominions of Britain rallied to her side during Great War. Finally, by a curious coincidence, in the Venet Calendar the feast of St George of England immediat precedes the feast of 'Glorioso Messer San Marco.' HORATIO F. BROWN Art. 6.-THE BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA COMPANY. 1. Cecil Rhodes. By Basil Williams. Constable, 1921. 3. Special Reference as to the Ownership of the Unalienated 4. Colony of Southern Rhodesia. Government Gazette Extraordinary, Oct. 1, 1923, in which is published the Southern Rhodesia Constitution. And other State Documents. THE history of the British South Africa Company is one which might serve to remind an age, accustomed to regard the acquisition of territory and the expansion of Sovereignties as an affair purely of diplomatic conferences and Inter Allied Councils; of how greatly the British Empire is indebted to the half-'conquistador,' half-commercial spirit of the merchant adventurer. The impulse which took Raleigh and Drake and their light-hearted followers across the Spanish main in search of more or less visionary El Dorados, or which sent the emissaries of the Hudson's Bay Company to hunt or bargain for furs in the frozen north of Canada, was partly the pure sest for discovery, but largely, also, the sense of the 'main chance'; and if it be the possession of this complex spirit that makes our people a nation of shopkeepers, then surely shopkeeping must be the most romantic profession in the world. This spirit was no doubt deliberately encouraged, used, and directed by statesmen bent on founding an Empire strong enough to hold its Own against the pretensions to world-power of the Empires first of Spain and then of France, and that with the minimum of risk, responsibility, and expense to the statesmen and the maximum of those inconveniences to the merchant adventurers. But the spirit itself, the efficient cause of Imperial expansion, was that of the adventurers, and the results achieved testify alike to their enterprise and to the sagacity of the politicians who availed themselves of it. The most notable and, until the end of the 19th |