ing him in his small lodging; that we and to heal. They are powerful, not see him sitting at the old organ beneath only to delight, but to elevate and the faded green hangings; that we can purify. Nor do we envy the man who catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, can study either the life or the writings rolling in vain to find the day; that of the great poet and patriot, without we are reading in the lines of his noble aspiring to emulate, not indeed the countenance the proud and mournful sublime works with which his genius history of his glory and his affliction. has enriched our literature, but the zeal We image to ourselves the breathless with which he laboured for the public silence in which we should listen to his good, the fortitude with which he enslightest word, the passionate venera-dured every private calamity, the lofty tion with which we should kneel to kiss disdain with which he looked down on his hand and weep upon it, the ear- temptations and dangers, the deadly nestness with which we should en-hatred which he bore to bigots and deavour to console him, if indeed such tyrants, and the faith which he so a spirit could need consolation, for the sternly kept with his country and with neglect of an age unworthy of his his fame. talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips.

MACHIAVELLI. (March, 1827.) Euvres complètes de MACHIAVEL, traduites par J. V. PERIER. Paris: 1825. THOSE who have attended to the practice of our literary tribunal are well aware that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster Hall, we are frequently enabled to take cognisance of cases lying beyond the sphere of our original jurisdiction. We need hardly say, therefore, that in the present instance M. Périer is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose of bringing Machiavelli into court.

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the We doubt whether any name in balance and have not been found literary history be so generally odious wanting, which have been declared as that of the man whose character and sterling by the general consent of man-writings we now propose to consider. kind, and which are visibly stamped The terms in which he is commonly with the image and superscription of described would seem to import that he the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate

was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of perjury, and that, before the publication of his fatal Prince, there had never been a hypocrite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient crime. One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy from that execrable volume. Another remarks that since it was translated into Turkish, the Sultans

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. Livy, intended for the perusal of the

It is not strange that ordinary readers most enthusiastic patriots of Florence, should regard the author of such a in his History, inscribed to one of the book as the most depraved and shame-most amiable and estimable of the less of human beings. Wise men, how-Popes, in his public dispatches, in his ever, have always been inclined to look private memoranda, the same obliquity with great suspicion on the angels and of moral principle for which The Prince 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.

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

for dedicating The Prince to a patron 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 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 seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two characters altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind; and their combination, like that of the variegated threads in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glancing and ever-changing appearance. The explanation might have 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.

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 of Trent, in the following generation, pronounced unfit for the perusal of

During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the downfal of the Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far greater degree than any other part of Western Europe, the traces of ancient civilisation. The night which descended upon her was the night of an Arctic summer. The dawn began to reappear before the last reflection of the preceding sunset had faded from the horizon. It was in the 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.

That which most distinguished Italy from the neighbouring countries was 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 by-laws, enjoyed a considerable share of republican independence. Thus a strong democratic spirit was called into action. The Carlovingian sovereigns were too imbecile to subdue it. The generous policy of Otho encouraged it. It might perhaps have been suppressed by a close coalition between the Church and the Empire. It was fostered and invigorated by their disputes. In the twelfth century it attained its full vigour, and, after a long and doubtful conflict, triumphed over the abilities and courage of the Swabian Princes.

themselves Catholics, they had ceased to be Papists. Those spiritual arms which carried terror into the palaces and camps of the proudest sovereigns excited only contempt in the immediate neighbourhood of the Vatican. Alexander, when he commanded our Henry the Second to submit to the lash before the tomb of a rebellious subject, was himself an exile. The Romans, apprehending that he entertained designs against their liberties, had driven him from their city; and, though he solemnly promised to confine himself 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 flourish. stitute a moral for a political servitude, ing parts of Italy, the feudal nobles and to exalt the Popes at the expense were reduced to comparative insignifiof the Cæsars. Happily the public cance. In some districts they took mind of Italy had long contained the shelter under the protection of the seeds of free opinions, which were now powerful commonwealths which they rapidly developed by the genial influ-were unable to oppose, and gradually ence 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

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 manufacsovereign 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