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While the city of the Medici is receding from its crumbling walls, like the human form shrinking into "the lean and slipper'd pantaloon," the Queen of the Adriatic sleeping on her muddy isles, and Rome itself is only to be traced by fallen temples and buried columns, the youthful vigor of America is fast covering the wilds of the West with the happiest fruits of human industry.

Celebrates his victories. The country which was formerly occupied by Macedon and the other states of Greece is now Turkey in Europe. In the northern part of it is a vast chain of mountains called now the Balkan. In Alexander's day it was Mount Hæmus. This chain forms a broad belt of lofty and uninhabitable land, and extends from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.

At the period to which we allude, they were governed by a queen, named Teuta, who was a woman of a bold and enterprising spirit: the Roman merchants, who traded, in the Adriatic, had frequently been plundered and cruelly treated by her subjects; upon this, the Roman senate sent two ambassadors to her, to insist that she should put a stop to these measures.

The trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the Adriatic, and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of every climate and religion.

Charles had nothing left, therefore, but to withdraw due eastward across the great divide of the Alps, where they bow toward the Adriatic, and pass into the valley of the Isonzo, behind that full and rushing stream, which he fondly hoped would stop the French pursuit. The frost, however, had bridged it in several places, and these were quickly found.

For, looking across the Adriatic, she sees the monstrous vision of a united and aggressive Slavdom, untold millions strong, of which the Jugoslavs are but the skirmish-line, ready to dispute not merely Italy's schemes for the commercial mastery of the Balkans but her overlordship of that sea which she regards as an Italian lake. Jugoslavia's claims to Fiume are more briefly stated.

Every year ships-of-the-line were either laid down or added to the fleet. Venice and Genoa, under his control, saw their old splendors rise again, and from the shores of the Elbe to the head of the Adriatic all the ports of the continent emulously seconded the creative thought of the emperor.

I was sorry to leave Venice, and regretted my peaceful excursions upon the Adriatic, when the Euganean hills were lost in a golden haze, and the sun cast his departing gleam across the waters. No bright rays illuminated my departure, but the coolness and perfume of the air made some amends for their absence.

I saw Venice and the Adriatic; I saw her ruin in the ruin of the face before me. I walked to and fro in that city, so beloved of her citizens; I went from the Rialto Bridge, along the Grand Canal, and from the Riva degli Schiavoni to the Lido, returning to St. Mark's, that cathedral so unlike all others in its sublimity.

Naturally, they longed to carry their wealth and their aged heads for the two elders were now well stricken in years safely back to their beloved Venice on the Adriatic, so far away. But Kublai Khan would not listen to any of their suggestions, and turned a deaf ear to their hints. A happy chance intervened to bring them out of the wild, mysterious realm of the Great Khan.