THE POSITION OF WOMEN 83 



and its admirable qualities of vigour and simplicity, 

 which under other auspices might have regenerated 

 the Hellenic world, had been wiped out. Such was the 

 result of a determined effort to improve environment 

 at the cost of sacrificing the heredity of the future 

 generations. 



Venice provides us with another solution of the 

 problem, equally unsatisfactory to all concerned. The 

 whole story is contained in a few sentences in the 

 Cambridge Modern History : l 



" Yet much private wealth remained in Venice, and 

 no signs of exhaustion or poverty appeared in its life 

 of luxury and display, its feasts and carnivals, its 

 theatres, concerts and balls. . . . Still, strangers from 

 every part flocked to share the gaieties of Venice, its 

 life of amenity and licence, where everyone might 

 enjoy himself to the utmost, sure of excellent police and 

 sanitation. . . . Interbreeding, limitation of families, 

 strict entails, and the custom of younger sons taking 

 Orders, had so diminished the nobility, that during 

 this century the members of the Grand Council de- 

 creased from fourteen to seven hundred. An attempt 

 to infuse new blood by ennobling good provincial 

 families failed, since few would pay the sum demanded 

 for the honour. . . . All through the century the 

 physical and the political and moral decadence of 

 Venice continued ; yet the changes which accompanied 

 her decay were so gradual that they can only be 

 estimated by their ultimate results. Venice really 

 existed on her past reputation and on the mutual 

 jealousies which withheld her powerful neighbours 



1 Vol. vi., The Eighteenth Century, pp. 606-7. 



