winter of 809-10.  Compare the tale of Charlemagne casting his sword into the sea, with the words, ’Truly, even as this brand which I have cast into the sea shall belong neither to me nor to you nor to any other man in all the world, even so shall no man in the world have power to hurt the realm of Venice; and he who would harm it shall feel the wrath and displeasure of God, even as it has fallen upon me and my people.’—­See Canale, Cron., c.  VIII.  These are, of course, all legends.

3.  ’Voirs est que la mer Arians est de le ducat de Venise.’—­Canale, op. cit., p. 600.  Albertino Mussato calls Venice ’dominatrix Adriaci maris.’—­Molmenti, Venice, I, p. 120.

4.  See some good contemporary accounts of the ceremony quoted in Molmenti, Venice, I, pp. 212-15.

5.  During the fatal war of Chioggia between the two republics of Venice and Genoa, which ended in 1381, it was said that the Genoese admiral (or some say Francesco Carrara), when asked by the Doge to receive peace ambassadors, replied, ’Not before I have bitted the horses on St Mark’s.’—­H.F.  Brown, Studies in the Hist. of Venice, I, p. 130.

6.  Canale, op. cit., p. 270.

7.  ’The weather was clear and fine ... and when they were at sea, the mariners let out the sails to the wind, and let the ships run with spread sails before the wind over the sea’—­See, for instance, Canale, op. cit., pp. 320, 326, and elsewhere.

8.  Canale, op. cit., cc.  I and II, pp. 268-72.  Venice is particularly fortunate in the descriptions which contemporaries have left of her—­not only her own citizens (such as Canale, Sanudo and the Doge Mocenigo) but also strangers.  Petrarch’s famous description of Venetian commerce, as occasioned by the view which he saw from his window in the fourteenth century, has often been quoted:  ’See the innumerable vessels which set forth from the Italian shore in the desolate winter, in the most variable and stormy spring, one turning its prow to the east, the other to the west; some carrying our wine to foam in British cups, our fruits to flatter the palates of the Scythians and, still more hard of credence, the wood of our forests to the Egean and the Achaian isles; some to Syria, to Armenia, to the Arabs and Persians, carrying oil and linen and saffron, and bringing back all their diverse goods to us....  Let me persuade you to pass another hour in my company.  It was the depth of night and the heavens were full of storm, and I, already weary and half asleep, had come to an end of my writing, when suddenly a burst of shouts from the sailors penetrated my ear.  Aware of what these shouts should mean from former experience, I rose hastily and went up to the higher windows of this house, which look out upon the port.  Oh, what a spectacle, mingled with feelings of pity, of wonder, of fear and of delight!  Resting on their anchors close to the marble banks which serve as a mole to the vast palace which this free and liberal