century with equal horror. Patriotic of the Peninsula. The wealth which

feeling also might induce Machiavelli to look with some indulgence and regret on the memory of the only leader who could have defended the independence of Italy against the confederate spoilers of Cambray.

had been accumulated during centuries
of prosperity and repose was rapidly
melting away. The intellectual superi-
ority of the oppressed people only ren-
dered them more keenly sensible of
their political degradation. Literature
and taste, indeed, still disguised with a
flush of hectic loveliness and brilliancy
the ravages of an incurable decay.
The iron had not yet entered into the
soul. The time was not yet come when
eloquence was to be gagged, and reason
to be hoodwinked, when the harp of
the poet was to be hung on the willows
of Arno, and the right hand of the
painter to forget its cunning. Yet a
discerning eye might even then have
seen that genius and learning would
not long survive the state of things from
which they had sprung, and that the
great men whose talents gave lustre
to that melancholy period had been
formed under the influence of happier
days, and would leave no successors
behind them. The times which shine
with the greatest splendour in literary
history are not always those to which
the human mind is most indebted. Of
this we may be convinced, by compar-
ing the generation which follows them
with that which had preceded them.
The first fruits which are reaped under
a bad system often spring from seed
sown under a good one.
Thus it was,

On this subject Machiavelli felt most strongly. Indeed the expulsion of the foreign tyrants, and the restoration of that golden age which had preceded the irruption of Charles the Eighth, were projects which, at that time, fascinated all the master-spirits of Italy. The magnificent vision delighted the great but ill-regulated mind of Julius. It divided with manuscripts and sauces, painters and falcons, the attention of the frivolous Leo. It prompted the generous treason of Morone. It imparted a transient energy to the feeble mind and body of the last Sforza. It excited for one moment an honest ambition in the false heart of Pescara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the vices of the national character. To the discriminating cruelties of politicians, committed for great ends on select victims, the moral code of the Italians was too indulgent. But though they might have recourse to barbarity as an expedient, they did not require it as a stimulant. They turned with loathing from the atrocity of the strangers who seemed to love blood for its own sake, who, not content with sub-in some measure, with the Augustan jugating, were impatient to destroy, age. Thus it was with the age of Rawho found a fiendish pleasure in razing phael and Ariosto, of Aldus and Vida. magnificent cities, cutting the throats Machiavelli deeply regretted the misof enemies who cried for quarter, or fortunes of his country, and clearly suffocating an unarmed population by discerned the cause and the remedy. thousands in the caverns to which it It was the military system of the Itahad fled for safety. Such were the lian people which had extinguished cruelties which daily excited the terror their value and discipline, and left their and disgust of a people among whom, wealth an easy prey to every foreign till lately, the worst that a soldier had plunderer. The Secretary projected a to fear in a pitched battle was the loss scheme alike honourable to his heart of his horse and the expense of his ran- and to his intellect, for abolishing the som. The swinish intemperance of use of mercenary troops, and for orSwitzerland, the wolfish avarice of ganizing a national militia. Spain, the gross licentiousness of the French, indulged in violation of hos-effect this great object ought alone to pitality, of decency, of love itself, the wanton inhumanity which was common to all the invaders, had made them objects of deadly hatred to the inhabitants

The exertions which he made to

rescue his name from obloquy. Though his situation and his habits were pacific, he studied with intense assiduity the theory of war. He made himself

master of all its details. The Floren- | deprived of the blessings even of this tine government entered into his views. infamous and servile repose. Her miliA council of war was appointed. Le-tary and political institutions were vies were decreed. The indefatigable swept away together. The Medici reminister flew from place to place in turned, in the train of foreign invaders, order to superintend the execution of from their long exile. The policy of his design. The times were, in some Machiavelli was abandoned; and his respects, favourable to the experiment. public services were requited with poThe system of military tactics had verty, imprisonment, and torture. undergone a great revolution. The The fallen statesman still clung to cavalry was no longer considered as his project with unabated ardour. With forming the strength of an army. The the view of vindicating it from some hours which a citizen could spare from popular objections and of refuting some his ordinary employments, though by prevailing errors on the subject of milino means sufficient to familiarise him tary science, he wrote his seven books with the exercise of a man-at-arms, on the Art of War. This excellent might render him an useful foot-soldier. work is in the form of a dialogne. The The dread of a foreign yoke, of plun- opinions of the writer are put into the der, massacre, and conflagration, might mouth of Fabrizio Colonna, a powerful have conquered that repugnance to nobleman of the Ecclesiastical State, military pursuits which both the in- and an officer of distinguished merit in dustry and the idleness of great towns the service of the King of Spain. Cocommonly generate. For a time the lonna visits Florence on his way from scheme promised well. The new troops Lombardy to his own domains. He is acquitted themselves respectably in the invited to meet some friends at the field. Machiavelli looked with parental house of Cosimo Rucellai, an amiable rapture on the success of his plan, and and accomplished young man, whose began to hope that the arms of Italy early death Machiavelli feelingly demight once more be formidable to the plores. After partaking of an elegant barbarians of the Tagus and the Rhine. entertainment, they retire from the heat But the tide of misfortune came on be-into the most shady recesses of the garfore the barriers which should have den. Fabrizio is struck by the sight of withstood it were prepared. For a some uncommon plants. Cosimo says time, indeed, Florence might be considered as peculiarly fortunate. Famine and sword and pestilence had devastated the fertile plains and stately cities of the Po. All the curses denounced of old against Tyre seemed to have tallen on Venice. Her merchants already stood afar off, lamenting for their great city. The time seemed near when the sea-weed should overgrow her silent Rialto, and the fisherman wash his nets in her deserted arsenal. Naples had been four times conquered and reconquered by tyrants equally indifferent to its welfare, and equally greedy for its spoils. Florence, as yet, had only to endure degradation and extortion, to submit to the mandates of foreign powers, to buy over and over again, at an enormous price, what was already justly her own, to return thanks for being wronged, and to ask pardon for being in the right. She was at length

that, though rare, in modern days, they are frequently mentioned by the classical authors, and that his grandfather, like many other Italians, amused himself with practising the ancient methods of gardening. Fabrizio expresses his regret that those who, in later times, affected the manners of the old Romans should select for imitation the most trifling pursuits. This leads to a conversation on the decline of military discipline and on the best means of restoring it.

The institution of the Florentine militia is ably defended; and several improvements are suggested in the details.

The Swiss and the Spaniards were, at that time, regarded as the best soldiers in Europe. The Swiss battalion consisted of pikemen, and bore a close resemblance to the Greck phalanx. The Spaniards, like the soldiers of Rome, were armed with the sword

The Prince and the Discourses on Livy were written after the fall of the Republican Government. The former was dedicated to the Young Lorenzo di Medici. This circumstance seems to have disgusted the contemporaries of the writer far more than the doctrines which have rendered the name of the work odious in later times. It was considered as an indication of political apostasy. The fact however seems to have been that Machiavelli, despairing of the liberty of Florence, was inclined to support any government which might preserve her independence. The interval which sepa

and the shield. The victories of Fla- | readers who take no interest in the mininus and Æmilius over the Mace- subject. donian kings seem to prove the superiority of the weapons used by the legions. The same experiment had been recently tried with the same result at the battle of Ravenna, one of those tremendous days into which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a famine or a plague. In that memorable conflict, the infantry of Arragon, the old companions of Gonsalvo, deserted by all their allies, hewed a passage through the thickest of the imperial pikes, and effected an unbroken retreat, in the face of the gendarmerie of De Foix, and the renowned artillery of Este. Fabrizio, or rather Machiavelli, pro-rated a democracy and a despotism, poses to combine the two systems, to arm the foremost lines with the pike for the purpose of repulsing cavalry, and those in the rear with the sword, as being a weapon better adapted for every other purpose. Throughout the work, the author expresses the highest admiration of the military science of the ancient Romans, and the greatest contempt for the maxims which had been in vogue amongst the Italian commanders of the preceding generation. He prefers infantry to cavalry, and fortified camps to fortified towns. He is inclined to substitute rapid movements and decisive engagements for the languid and dilatory operations of his countrymen. He attaches very little importance to the invention of gunpowder. Indeed he seems to think that it ought scarcely to produce any change in the mode of arming or of disposing troops. The general testimony of historians, it must be allowed, seems to prove that the ill-constructed and ill-served artillery of those times, though useful in a siege, was of little value on the field of battle.

Of the tactics of Machiavelli we will not venture to give an opinion: but we are certain that his book is most able and interesting. As a commentary on the history of his times, it is invaluable. The ingenuity, the grace, and the perspicuity of the style, and the eloquence and animation of particular passages, must give pleasure even to

Soderini and Lorenzo, seemed to vanish when compared with the difference between the former and the present state of Italy, between the security, the opulence, and the repose which she had enjoyed under her native rulers, and the misery in which she had been plunged since the fatal year in which the first foreign tyrant had descended from the Alps. The noble and pathetic exhortation with which The Prince concludes shows how strongly the writer felt upon this subject.

The Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied in the latter, to the longer duration and more complex interest of a society. To a modern statesman the form of the Discourses may appear to be puerile. In truth Livy is not an historian on whom implicit reliance can be placed, even in cases where he must have possessed considerable means of information. And the first Decade, to which Machiavelli has confined himself, is scarcely entitled to more credit than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before the Roman invasion. But the commentator is indebted to Livy for little more than a few texts which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or the Decameron. The whole train of thought is original,

his political scheme, the means had been more deeply considered than the ends. The great principle, that societies and laws exist only for the purpose of increasing the sum of private happi

On the peculiar immorality which from a single defect which appears to has rendered The Prince unpopular, us to pervade his whole system. In and which is almost equally discernible in the Discourses, we have already given our opinion at length. We have attempted to show that it belonged rather to the age than to the man, that it was a partial taint, and by no means im-ness, is not recognised with sufficient plied general depravity. We cannot clearness. The good of the body, dishowever deny that it is a great blemish, tinct from the good of the members, and that it considerably diminishes the and sometimes hardly compatible with pleasure which, in other respects, those the good of the members, seems to be works must afford to every intelligent the object which he proposes to himmind. self. Of all political fallacies, this has It is, indeed, impossible to conceive perhaps had the widest and the most a more healthful and vigorous consti- mischievous operation. The state of tution of the understanding than that society in the little commonwealths of which these works indicate. The qua- Greece, the close connection and mulities of the active and the contempla- tual dependence of the citizens, and the tive statesman appear to have been severity of the laws of war, tended to blended in the mind of the writer into encourage an opinion which, under a rare and exquisite harmony. His such circumstances, could hardly be skill in the details of business had not called erroneous. The interests of every been acquired at the expense of his individual were inseparably bound up general powers. It had not rendered with those of the state. An invasion his mind less comprehensive; but it destroyed his corn-fields and vineyards, had served to correct his speculations drove him from his home, and comand to impart to them that vivid and pelled him to encounter all the hardpractical character which so widely ships of a military life. A treaty of distinguishes them from the vague peace restored him to security and theories of most political philosophers comfort. A victory doubled the numEvery man who has seen the world ber of his slaves. A defeat perhaps knows that nothing is so useless as a gemade him a slave himself. When neral maxim. If it be very moral and Pericles, in the Peloponnesian war, told very true, it may serve for a copy to a the Athenians, that, if their country charity-boy. If, like those of Roche- triumphed, their private losses would foucault, it be sparkling and whimsical speedily be repaired, but that, if their it may make an excellent motto for an arms failed of success, every individual essay. But few indeed of the many amongst them would probably be ruined, wise apophthegms which have been he spoke no more than the truth. Не uttered, from the time of the Seven spoke to men whom the tribute of vanSages of Greece to that of Poor Richard. quished cities supplied with food and have prevented a single foolish action. clothing, with the luxury of the bath We give the highest and the most pe- and the amusements of the theatre, culiar praise to the precepts of Machia- on whom the greatness of their country velli when we say that they may fre- conferred rank, and before whom the quently be of real use in regulating members of less prosperous communiconduct, not so much because they are ties trembled; to men who, in case of more just or more profound than those a change in the public fortunes, would, which might be culled from other au- at least, be deprived of every comfort thors, as because they can be more rea- and every distinction which they endily applied to the problems of real life.joyed. To be butchered on the smoking There are errors in these works. But they are errors which a writer, situated like Machiavelli, could scarcely avoid. They arise, for the most part,

ruins of their city, to be dragged in chains to a slave-market, to see one child torn from them to dig in the quarries of Sicily, and another to guard the

Не

harams of Persepolis, these were the be avoided. Such mistakes must nefrequent and probable consequences of cessarily be committed by early specunational calamities. Hence, among the lators in every science. Greeks, patriotism became a governing In this respect it is amusing to comprinciple, or rather an ungovernable pare The Prince and the Discourses with passion. Their legislators and their the Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu enjoys, philosophers took it for granted that, perhaps, a wider celebrity than any poin providing for the strength and great-litical writer of modern Europe. Someness of the state, they sufficiently pro- thing he doubtless owes to his merit, vided for the happiness of the people. but much more to his fortune. He had The writers of the Roman empire lived the good luck of a Valentine. under despots, into whose dominion a caught the eye of the French nation, at hundred nations were melted down, the moment when it was waking from and whose gardens would have covered the long sleep of political and religious the little commonwealths of Phlius and bigotry; and, in consequence, he bePlatea. Yet they continued to employ came a favourite. The English, at that the same language, and to cant about time, considered a Frenchman who the duty of sacrificing every thing to a talked about constitutional checks and country to which they owed nothing. fundamental laws as a prodigy not less astonishing than the learned pig or the musical infant. Specious but shallow, studious of effect, indifferent to truth, eager to build a system, but careless of collecting those materials out of which alone a sound and durable system can be built, the lively President constructed theories as rapidly and as slightly as card-houses, no sooner projected than completed, no sooner completed than blown away, no sooner blown away than forgotten. Machiavelli errs only because his experience, acquired in a very peculiar state of society, could not always enable him to calculate the effect of institutions differing from those of which he had observed the operation. Montesquieu errs, because he has a fine thing to say, and is resolved to say it. If the phænomena which lie before him will not suit his purpose, all history must be ransacked. If nothing established by authentic testimony can be racked or chipped to suit his Procrustean hypothesis, he puts up with some mon

Causes similar to those which had influenced the disposition of the Greeks operated powerfully on the less vigorous and daring character of the Italians. The Italians, like the Greeks, were members of small communities. Every man was deeply interested in the welfare of the society to which he belonged, a partaker in its wealth and its poverty, in its glory and its shame. In the age of Machiavelli this was peculiarly the case. Public events had produced an immense sum of misery to private citizens. The Northern invaders had brought want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their roof, and the knife to their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which make it prosperous within itself.

Japan, told by writers compared with whom Lucian and Gulliver were veracious, liars by a double right, as travellers and as Jesuits.

Nothing is more remarkable in the political treatises of Machiavelli than the fairness of mind which they indi-strous fable about Siam, or Bantam, or cate. It appears where the author is in the wrong, almost as strongly as where he is in the right. He never advances a false opinion because it is new or splendid, because he can clothe it in a happy phrase, or defend it by an ingenious sophism. His errors are at once explained by a reference to the circumstances in which he was placed. They evidently were not sought out; they lay in his way, and could scarcely

Propriety of thought, and propriety of diction, are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle at any cost which produces