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, who bore the unpopular name of Medici. as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. But to those immoral doctrines which And even from The Prince itself we have since called forth such severe recould select many passages in support prehensions no exception appears to of this remark. To a reader of our have been taken. The cry against age and country this inconsistency is, them was first raised beyond the Alps, at first, perfectly bewildering. The and seems to have been heard with whole man seems to be an enigma, a amazement in Italy. The earliest asgrotesque assemblage of incongruous sailant, as far as we are aware, was a qualities, selfishness and generosity, countryman of our own, Cardinal Pole. cruelty and benevolence, craft and sim- The author of the Anti-Machiavelli was plicity, abject villany and romantic a French Protestant. 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 time of the French Merovingians and or a very affected man. But he was of the Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance evidently neither the one nor the other. and ferocity seemed to have done their His works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen.

worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan provinces, recognising the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something of Eastern knowledge and reThis is strange: and yet the strangest finement. Rome, protected by the is behind. There is no reason whatever sacred character of her Pontiffs, enjoyed to think, that those amongst whom he at least comparative security and relived saw anything shocking or incon- pose. Even in those regions where the gruous in his writings. Abundant sanguinary Lombards had fixed their proofs remain of the high estimation monarchy, there was incomparably in which both his works and his person more of wealth, of information, of phywere held by the most respectable sical comfort, and of social order, than among his contemporaries. Clement could be found in Gaul, Britain, or the Seventh patronised the publication Germany. That which most distinguished Italy of those very books which the Council of Trent, in the following generation, from the neighbouring countries was pronounced anfit for the perusal of the importance which the population

of the towns, at a very early period, | 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 sank into the mass of burghers. In that country had observed the whole other places they possessed great influmachinery of the church, its saints and ence; but it was an influence widely its miracles, its lofty pretensions and its different from that which was exercised splendid ceremonial, its worthless bless- by the aristocracy of any Transalings and its harmless curses, too long pine kingdom. They were not petty and too closely to be duped. They princes, but eminent citizens. Instead stood behind the scenes on which others of strengthening their fastnesses among were gazing with childish awe and in- the mountains, they embellished their tercst. They witnessed the arrange-palaces in the market-place. The state