Shannon Costello

This is the first book I ever recall reading that involved a real live Doge!

This rather obscure work by James Fenimore Cooper is set in long ago Venice. Cooper briefly visited Venice and describes the city carefully—not that we expected less than a minute description from Cooper! His goal, as stated in his preface, was to applaud democracy, chiefly by contrasting it with a totalitarian state in which power is in the hands of a wealthy few, ultimately the secret “Council of Three.”

Everybody spies on everyone. The poor are oppressed. People are used ruthlessly. The few voices of those who call for justice are stilled. And in the end,

“The porticos became brilliant with lamps, the gay laughed, the reckless trifled, the masker pursued his hiddlen purpose, the cantatrice and the grotesque acted their parts, and the million existed in that vacant enjoyment which distinguishes the pleasures of the thoughtless and the idle. Each lived for himself, while the state of Venice held its vicious sway, corrupting alike the ruler and the ruled, by its mockery of those sacred principals which are alone found in truth and natural justice.”