CHAP. xvi. TRADE OF ITALY. 



neglected state of cultivation. The riches of 

 Italy had been long and gradually increasing ; 

 the foundation was laid immediately after the 

 destruction of the kingdom of the Lombards, by 

 the fisheries carried on upon the shores of the 

 Adriatic. From the art acquired by that pro- 

 fession, the Italians became the chief and most 

 expert navigators 1 . They then opened a com- 

 mercial intercourse with the rising dominions of 

 the new Arabian prophet, which increased their 

 wealth and extended their naval power. In a few 

 centuries, when a kind of spiritual insanity was 

 kindled in western Europe, and vast forces were 

 to be transported to the shores of Asia, the ships 

 of the Italian cities were hired at enormous freights 

 by the soldiers of the cross, who expended the 

 savings of centuries in expeditions the pecuniary 

 profit of which centred aim ost % wholly among the 

 merchants of the republics in the Italian peninsula. 

 Commerce was naturally connected with, and in 

 that age dependent on, navigation. The inter- 

 course of Italy with Greece and with the Arabs, 

 and, through the latter, with India, made the 

 cities of Italy the depositories and the dispensers 



1 Though the honour of the discovery of the mariner's com- 

 pass has been contended for on behalf of several individuals, 

 it seems probable that the world is indebted for it to an Italian 

 named Flavio de Gioca, of Amalfi, who constructed the first 

 with only eight points, but that afterwards the Instrument re- 

 ceived various and gradual improvements in other countries and 

 from other persons. Anderson's Hist. Comm. vol. v. p. 144. 



