The _ridotti_, the informal clubs of Venice in those days, were
important centres of influence--political, legislative, and literary;
and there was a certain palazzo Morosini, well known to many of the
senators who gathered in the Broglio, where questions of vital interest
to the thinkers and rulers of Venice were discussed with the degree of
knowledge that might have been expected from so eminent a company as
that which made the home of the distinguished senator Andrea Morosini
the scene of its ridotto, and where freedom of speech was much greater
than seemed wise in the candid sunshine of the Piazza.
Of its present numbers all, at some period of their lives, held high
office under the Republic--they were senators, secretaries of state,
ambassadors--and three among that little group of thirty lived to wear
the beretta. It represented essentially the patrician culture of Venice,
and Morosini himself was already eminent as an historian; but the chief
literary centre was still acknowledged to be that quaint house in Campo
Agostino, of Aldo Manuzio, _il vecchio_, bearing, as in his day,
shield-wise, its forbidding inscription, "Whoever you are, Aldo
requesteth you, if you want anything, to ask it in few words and depart;
unless, like Hercules, you come to lend the aid of your shoulders to the
weary Atlas.
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