Description of the Venetian Archives. The archives of Venice, as
they are arranged at the present time, comprise the State Papers
of every kind, legislative, judicial, administrative, political,
and diplomatic, together with all other documents of public
interest which have been collected since the fall of the ancient
Republic. The accumulation of MSS. is prodigious; but vast as is
the amount, it would have been greatly exceeded if fires and
other casualties, which will be noticed presently, had not
thinned the records of the Signory. From a very remote period
the whole course of the government had a tendency to multiply
official documents; and an elaborate system of centralization
exacted the most minute reports and the most frequent
correspondence from all who were invested with delegated
authority. While the favourite of a despotic sovereign could,
like Wolsey, take upon himself the functions of several
departments at once, and leave behind him comparatively few
traces of his eccentric course, the Venetian