He should read the record given by Mutinelli (_Diari Urbani_, p.

157), of Venetian fornication in 1340, at the time when the Ducal Palace was being covered with its sculpture.

The public prostitutes were reckoned then at 11,654.
Adulteries, rapes, infanticides were matters of daily occurrence.

Yet the Renaissance had not begun, and the expansion of Venice, which roused the envious hostility of Europe, had yet to happen.] _The Proletariate_.
In what concerns social morality it would be almost impossible to define the position of the proletariate, tillers of the soil, and artisans, at this epoch.

These classes vary in their goodness and their badness, in their drawbacks and advantages, from age to age far less than those who mold the character of marked historical periods by culture.