Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/876

 866 Reviews of Books which has always made it a kind of usus naturae of the Middle Age, but does not become a less attractive product of civic energy by being assimilated to the general laws of medieval growth. Since volume I. does not go beyond the death of Enrico Dandolo (died 1205) we have yet to await the author's development of the victory of the oligarchy. It will be particularly interesting, in view of the submitted analogy of the Lombard cities, to see how he explains the absence in Venice of that reaction against the great families which converted the cities of Lonibardy into despotisms. But, as has already been said, the work is no mere constitutional study. It takes into account all the forces which played a part in the development of Venetian civilization, furnishing novel and reliable in- formation on the relation of church and state, commerce and industry, shipbuilding, and the fine arts. Is the student interested in the long and confusing struggle of the patriachs of Grado and Aquileia? He will find here a swift and authoritative review of their remarkable rivalry. The economic expansion by which Venice was enabled to enter the capitalistic stage ahead of almost all other medieval states, and thus to reduce a considerable portion of the Mediterranean world to. dependence on herself, receives wise and thorough attention. The foundation the author lays in this respect makes it possible, too, to show how it was largely the pressure of capitalistic forces which drew Venice into the Fourth Crusade and raised Dandolo to the proud height of conqueror of Constantinople. He denies, however, that the capital- istic agents acted consciously from the first, and upholds the much combated view that the turning aside of the crusade to Greece was in the nature of an accident. As the fine arts are treated with the same understanding as the economic and political problems of the city, the student of this field will be delighted with a very careful and valuable disquisition on Venice as the battle-ground of Lombard (or Italian) and Byzantine influences. Much remains calling for attention in this great store-house of fact. Suffice it to say that Appendix I. contains a masterly discussion of the sources of the period, and to add. not without regret, that, as in the case of so many German books, the paper is poor and the binding atrocious. Ferdixaxd Schwill. Venice. Its Individual Grozvth from the Earliest Begiiuiings to the Fall of the Republic. By Pompeo Molmenti. Translated by Horatio F. Brown. Two volumes. Part I., The Middle Ages. (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co.; London: John Murray. 1906. Pp. ix, 223: viii, 237.) The title of this book wrongs both the author and his readers by conveying an inadequate conception of the contents. Why the author should have hesitated to send out his work under some name clearly