East, which crushed Pisa and almost overcame Venice, was held in check
and controlled by the spirit of gain, the dream of the merchant, so that
Columbus, the very genius of adventure almost without an after-thought,
though a Genoese, was not encouraged, was indeed laughed at; and Genoa,
splendid in adventure but working only for gain, unable on this account
to establish any permanent colony, losing gradually all her possessions,
threw to the Spaniard the dominion of the New World, just because she
was not worthy of it. Men have called her Genoa the Proud, and indeed
who, looking on her from the sea or the sea-shore, will ever question
her title?--but the truth is, that she was not proud enough. She trusted
in riches; for her, glory was of no account if gold were not added to
it. If she entered the first Crusade as a Christian, it was really her
one disinterested action; and all the world acknowledged her valour and
her contrivance which won Jerusalem. But in the second Crusade, as in
the next, she no longer thought of glory or of the Tomb of Jesus, she
was intent on money; and since in that stony place but little booty
could be hoped for, she set herself to spoil the Christian, to provide
him at a price with ships, with provender, with the means of realising
his dream, a dream at which she could afford to laugh, secure as she was
in the possession of this world's goods. Then, when in the thirteenth
century those vast multitudes of soldiers, monks, dreamers, beggars,
and adventurers came to her, the port for Palestine, clamouring for
transports, she was sceptical and even scornful of them, but willing to
give them what they demanded, not for the love of God but for a price.
Even that beautiful and mysterious army of children which came to her
from France and Germany in 1212 seeking Jesus, she could hold in
contempt till, weary at last of feeding them, she found the galleys they
demanded, and in the loneliness of the sea betrayed them and sold them
for gold as slaves to the Arabs, so that of the seven thousand boys and
girls led by a lad of thirteen who came at the bidding of a voice to