have been more addicted than formerly | cision. It is notorious that Machiavelli to the custom of strangling their bro-was, through life, a zealous republican. thers. Lord Lyttelton charges the In the same year in which he compoor Florentine with the manifold trea- posed his manual of King-craft, he sons of the house of Guise, and with suffered imprisonment and torture in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. the cause of public liberty. It seems Several authors have hinted that the inconceivable that the martyr of freeGunpowder Plot is to be primarily dom should have designedly acted as attributed to his doctrines, and seem to the apostle of tyranny. Several emithink that his effigy ought to be sub-nent writers have, therefore, endeastituted for that of Guy Faux, in those voured to detect in this unfortunate processions by which the ingenious performance some concealed meaning, youth of England annually commeino- more consistent with the character and rate the preservation of the Three conduct of the author than that which Estates. The Church of Rome has appears at the first glance. pronounced his works accursed things. Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonyme for the Devil.*

One hypothesis is that Machiavelli intended to practise on the young Lorenzo de Medici a fraud similar to that which Sunderland is said to have employed against our James the Second, and that he urged his pupil to violent and perfidious measures, as the surest It is indeed scarcely possible for any means of accelerating the moment of person, not well acquainted with the deliverance and revenge. Another suphistory and literature of Italy, to read position which Lord Bacon seems to without horror and amazement the countenance, is that the treatise was celebrated treatise which has brought merely a piece of grave irony, intended so much obloquy on the name of Ma- to warn nations against the arts of chiavelli. Such a display of wicked- ambitious men. It would be easy to ness, naked yet not ashamed, such show that neither of these solutions is cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed consistent with many passages in The rather to belong to a fiend than to the Prince itself. But the most decisive most depraved of men. Principles refutation is that which is furnished which the most hardened ruffian would by the other works of Machiavelli. In scarcely hint to his most trusted ac- all the writings which he gave to the complice, or avow, without the disguise public, and in all those which the reof some palliating sophism, even to search of editors has, in the course of his own mind, are professed without three centuries, discovered, in his Cothe slightest circumlocution, and as-medies, designed for the entertainment sumed as the fundamental axioms of all of the multitude, in his Comments on political science.

It is not strange that ordinary readers should regard the author of such a book as the most depraved and shameless of human beings. Wise men, however, have always been inclined to look with great suspicion on the angels and dæmons of the multitude: and in the present instance, several circumstances have led even superficial observers to question the justice of the vulgar de

• Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick, Tho' he gave his name to our old Nick. Hudibras, Part III. Canto I. But, we believe, there is a schism on this subject among the antiquarians.

Livy, intended for the perusal of the most enthusiastic patriots of Florence, in his History, inscribed to one of the most amiable and estimable of the Popes, in his public dispatches, in his private memoranda, the same obliquity of moral principle for which The Prince is so severely censured is more or less discernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to find, in all the many volumes of his compositions, a single expression indicating that dissimulation and treachery had ever struck him as discreditable.

After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are acquainted with few

who bore the unpopular name of Medici. But to those immoral doctrines which have since called forth such severe reprehensions no exception appears to have been taken. The cry against them was first raised beyond the Alps, and seems to have been heard with amazement in Italy. The earliest assailant, as far as we are aware, was a countryman of our own, Cardinal Pole. The author of the Anti-Machiavelli was a French Protestant.

It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those times that we must seek for the real explanation of what seems most mysterious in the life and writings of this remarkable man. As this is a subject which suggests many interesting considerations, both political and metaphysical, we shall make no apology for discussing it at some length.

writings which exhibit so much eleva- | Christians. Some members of the detion of sentiment, so pure and warm a mocratical party censured the Secretary zeal for the public good, or so just a for dedicating The Prince to a patron view of the duties and rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from The Prince itself we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villany and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous perfidy, and an act of patriotic self-devotion, call forth the same kind and the same degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer During the gloomy and disastrous seems at once to be morbidly obtuse centuries which followed the downfal of and morbidly acute. Two characters the Roman Empire, Italy had prealtogether dissimilar are united in him. served, in a far greater degree than They are not merely joined, but inter- any other part of Western Europe, the woven. They are the warp and the traces of ancient civilisation. The night woof of his mind; and their combina- which descended upon her was the tion, like that of the variegated threads night of an Arctic summer. The dawn in shot silk, gives to the whole texture began to reappear before the last rea glancing and ever-changing appear-flection of the preceding sunset had ance. The explanation might have faded from the horizon. It was in the been easy, if he had been a very weak or a very affected man. But he was evidently neither the one nor the other. His works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen.

time of the French Merovingians and of the Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance and ferocity seemed to have done their worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan provinces, recognising the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something of Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome, protected by the sacred character of her Pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security and repose. Even in those regions where the sanguinary Lombards had fixed their monarchy, there was incomparably more of wealth, of information, of physical comfort, and of social order, than could be found in Gaul, Britain, or Germany.

This is strange: and yet the strangest is behind. There is no reason whatever to think, that those amongst whom he lived saw anything shocking or incongruous in his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the high estimation in which both his works and his person were held by the most respectable among his contemporaries. Clement the Seventh patronised the publication of those very books which the Council That which most distinguished Italy of Trent, in the following generation, from the neighbouring countries was pronounced unfit for the perusal of the importance which the population

of the towns, at a very early period, I ment of the pullies, and the manufacture began to acquire. Some cities had of the thunders. They saw the natural been founded in wild and remote situa- faces and heard the natural voices of tions, by fugitives who had escaped the actors. Distant nations looked on from the rage of the barbarians. Such the Pope as the vicegerent of the Alwere Venice and Genoa, which pre- mighty, the oracle of the All-wise, the served their freedom by their obscurity, umpire from whose decisions, in the till they became able to preserve it by disputes either of theologians or of their power. Other cities seem to have kings, no Christian ought to appeal. retained, under all the changing dy- The Italians were acquainted with all nasties of invaders, under Odoacer and the follies of his youth, and with all the Theodoric, Narses and Alboin, the mu- dishonest arts by which he had attained nicipal institutions which had been con- power. They knew how often he had ferred on them by the liberal policy of employed the keys of the Church to the Great Republic. In provinces release himself from the most sacred which the central government was too engagements, and its wealth to pamper feeble either to protect or to oppress, his mistresses and nephews. The docthese institutions gradually acquired trines and rites of the established restability and vigour. The citizens, de-ligion they treated with decent reverfended by their walls, and governed by ence. But though they still called their own magistrates and their own themselves Catholics, they had ceased by-laws, enjoyed a considerable share to be Papists. Those spiritual arms of republican independence. Thus a which carried terror into the palaces strong democratic spirit was called into and camps of the proudest sovereigns action. The Carlovingian sovereigns excited only contempt in the immewere too imbecile to subdue it. The diate neighbourhood of the Vatican. generous policy of Otho encouraged it. Alexander, when he commanded our It might perhaps have been suppressed Henry the Second to submit to the lash by a close coalition between the Church before the tomb of a rebellious subject, and the Empire. It was fostered and was himself an exile. The Romans, invigorated by their disputes. In the apprehending that he entertained detwelfth century it attained its full vigour, signs against their liberties, had driven and, after a long and doubtful conflict, him from their city; and, though he triumphed over the abilities and courage solemnly promised to confine himself of the Swabian Princes. for the future to his spiritual functions, they still refused to readmit him.

The assistance of the Ecclesiastical power had greatly contributed to the In every other part of Europe, a success of the Guelfs. That success large and powerful privileged class would, however, have been a doubtful trampled on the people and defied the good, if its only effect had been to sub-government. But, in the most flourishstitute a moral for a political servitude, ing parts of Italy, the feudal nobles and to exalt the Popes at the expense of the Cæsars. Happily the public mind of Italy had long contained the seeds of free opinions, which were now rapidly developed by the genial influence of free institutions. The people of that country had observed the whole machinery of the church, its saints and its miracles, its lofty pretensions and its splendid ceremonial, its worthless blessings and its harmless curses, too long and too closely to be duped. They stood behind the scenes on which others were gazing with childish awe and interest. They witnessed the arrange

were reduced to comparative insignificance. In some districts they took shelter under the protection of the powerful commonwealths which they were unable to oppose, and gradually sank into the mass of burghers. In other places they possessed great influence; but it was an influence widely different from that which was exercised by the aristocracy of any Transalpine kingdom. They were not petty princes, but eminent citizens. Instead of strengthening their fastnesses among the mountains, they embellished their palaces in the market-place. The state

of society in the Neapolitan dominions, | posterity is too often deceived by the and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical vague hyperboles of poets and rheState, more nearly resembled that which toricians, who mistake the splendour of existed in the great monarchies of Eu- a court for the happiness of a people. rope. But the governments of Lom- Fortunately, John Villani has given us bardy and Tuscany, through all their an ample and precise account of the revolutions, preserved a different cha- state of Florence in the early part of racter. A people, when assembled in a the fourteenth century. The revenue town, is far more formidable to its of the Republic amounted to three hunrulers than when dispersed over a wide dred thousand florins; a sum which, extent of country. The most arbitrary allowing for the depreciation of the of the Cæsars found it necessary to feed precious metals, was at least equivalent and divert the inhabitants of their un- to six hundred thousand pounds sterwieldy capital at the expense of the ling; a larger sum than England and provinces. The citizens of Madrid Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded have more than once besieged their annually to Elizabeth. The manufac sovereign in his own palace, and ex-ture of wool alone employed two huntorted from him the most humiliating dred factories and thirty thousand concessions. The Sultans have often workmen. The cloth annually probeen compelled to propitiate the furious rabble of Constantinople with the head of an unpopular Vizier. From the same cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy.

Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, revisited Italy; and with liberty came commerce and empire, science and taste, all the comforts and all the ornaments of life. The Crusades, from which the inhabitants of other countries gained nothing but relics and wounds, brought to the rising commonwealths of the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas a large increase of wealth, dominion, and knowledge. The moral and geographical position of those commonwealths enabled them to profit alike by the barbarism of the West and by the civilisation of the East. Italian ships covered every sea. Italian factories rose on every shore. The tables of Italian moneychangers were set in every city. Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. 'The operations of the commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful inventions. We doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, have at the present time reached so high a point of wealth and civilisation as some parts of Italy had attained four hundred years ago. Historians rarely descend to those details from which alone the real state of a community can be collected. Hence

duced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand florins; a sum fully equal in exchangeable value to two millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations, not of Florence only but of all Europe. The transactions of these establishments were sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward the Third of England upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its environs contained a hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants. In the various schools about ten thousand children were taught to read; twelve hundred studied arithmetic; six hundred received a learned education.

The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to that of the public prosperity. Under the despotic successors of Augustus, all the fields of the intellect had been turned into arid wastes, still marked out by formal boundaries, still retaining the traces of old cultivation, but yielding neither flowers nor fruit. The deluge of barbarism came. It swept away all the landmarks. It obliterated

all the signs of former tillage. But it | sculpture, were munificently encourfertilised while it devastated. When aged. Indeed it would be difficult to it receded, the wilderness was as the name an Italian of eminence, during garden of God, rejoicing on every side, the period of which we speak, who, laughing, clapping its hands, pouring whatever may have been his general forth, in spontaneous abundance, every character, did not at least affect a love thing brilliant, or fragrant, or nourish- of letters and of the arts. ing. A new language, characterised Knowledge and public prosperity by simple sweetness and simple energy, continued to advance together. Both had attained perfection. No tongue attained their meridian in the age of ever furnished more gorgeous and vivid Lorenzo the Magnificent. We cannot tints to poetry; nor was it long before refrain from quoting the splendid pasa poet appeared who knew how to sage, in which the Tuscan Thucydides employ them. Early in the fourteenth describes the state of Italy at that century came forth the Divine Comedy, period. "Ridotta tutta in somma pace beyond comparison the greatest work e tranquillità, coltivata non meno ne' of imagination which had appeared luoghi più montuosi e più sterili che since the poems of Homer. The fol- nelle pianure e regioni più fertili, nè lowing generation produced indeed no sottoposta ad altro imperio che de' suoi second Dante: but it was eminently medesimi, non solo era abbondantisdistinguished by general intellectual ac-sima d' abitatori e di ricchezze ; ma tivity. The study of the Latin writers illustrata sommamente dalla magnifihad never been wholly neglected in cenza di molti principi, dallo splendore Italy. But Petrarch introduced a more di molte nobilissime e bellissime città, profound, liberal, and elegant scholar-dalla sedia e maestà della religione, ship, and communicated to his country- fioriva d' uomini prestantissimi nell' men that enthusiasm for the literature, amministrazione delle cose pubbliche, the history, and the antiquities of e d' ingegni molto nobili in tutte le Rome, which divided his own heart scienze, ed in qualunque arte preclara with a frigid mistress and a more frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime and graceful models of Greece.

ed industriosa." When we peruse this just and splendid description, we can scarcely persuade ourselves that we are reading of times in which the annals of From this time, the admiration of England and France present us only learning and genius became almost an with a frightful spectacle of poverty, idolatry among the people of Italy. barbarity, and ignorance. From the Kings and republics, cardinals and oppressions of illiterate masters, and the doges, vied with each other in honour-sufferings of a degraded peasantry, it is ing and flattering Petrarch. Embassies delightful to turn to the opulent and from rival states solicited the honour enlightened States of Italy, to the vast of his instructions. His coronation agitated the Court of Naples and the people of Rome as much as the most important political transaction could have done. To collect books and antiques, to found professorships, to patronise men of learning, became almost universal fashions among the great. The spirit of literary research allied itself to that of commercial enterprise. Every place to which the merchant princes of Florence extended their gigantic traffic, from the bazars of the Tigris to the monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts. Architecture, painting, and

and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every article of comfort or luxury, the factories swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered with rich cultivation up to their very summits, the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure, every cultivated mind must repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence, the halls which rang with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled the midnight lamp of Poli

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