society, and has very dexterously con- | bined some hints taken from this tale, nected it with the history of his own with others from Boccaccio, in the plot times. The relation of the trick put on of "The Devil is an Ass," a play which, the doting old lover is exquisitely though not the most highly finished of humorous. It is far superior to the his compositions, is perhaps that which corresponding passage in the Latin exhibits the strongest proofs of genius. comedy, and scarcely yields to the The political correspondence of Maaccount which Falstaff gives of his chiavelli, first published in 1767, is ducking. unquestionably genuine, and highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances

Two other comedies without titles, the one in prose, the other in verse, ap-in which his country was placed during pear among the works of Machiavelli. The former is very short, lively enough, but of no great value. The latter we can scarcely believe to be genuine. Neither its merits nor its defects remind us of the reputed author. It was first printed in 1796, from a manuscript discovered in the celebrated library of the Strozzi. Its genuineness, if we have been rightly informed, is established solely by the comparison of hands. Our suspicions are strengthened by the circumstance, that the same manuscript contained a description of the plague of 1527, which has also, in consequence, been added to the works of Machiavelli. Of this last composition the strongest external evidence would scarcely induce us to believe him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable in matter and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst of their respective kinds, at once trite and affected, threadbare tinsel from the Rag Fairs and Monmouth Streets of literature. A foolish schoolboy might write such a piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the incomparable introduction of the Decameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose earliest works are characterised by manliness of thought and language, should, at near sixty years of age, descend to such puerility, is utterly inconceivable.

the greater part of his public life gave extraordinary encouragement to diplomatic talents. From the moment that Charles the Eighth descended from the Alps, the whole character of Italian politics was changed. The govern ments of the Peninsula ceased to form an independent system. Drawn from their old orbit by the attraction of the larger bodies which now approached them, they became mere satellites of France and Spain. All their disputes, internal and external, were decided by foreign influence. The contests of opposite factions were carried on, not as formerly in the senate-house or in the market-place, but in the antechambers of Louis and Ferdinand. Under these circumstances, the prosperity of the Italian States depended far more on the ability of their foreign agents, than on the conduct of those who were intrusted with the domestic administration. The ambassador had to discharge functions far more delicate than transmitting orders of knighthood, introducing tourists, or presenting his brethren with the homage of his high consideration. He was an advocate to whose management the dearest interests of his clients were intrusted, a spy clothed with an inviolable character. Instead of consulting, by a reserved manner and ambiguous style, the dignity of those whom he represented, he was to plunge into all the intrigues of the court at The little novel of Belphegor is plea- which he resided, to discover and flatter santly conceived, and pleasantly told. every weakness of the prince, and of But the extravagance of the satire in the favourite who governed the prince, some measure injures its effect. Ma- and of the lacquey who governed the chiavelli was unhappily married; and favourite. He was to compliment the his wish to avenge his own cause and mistress and bribe the confessor, to that of his brethren in misfortune, car-panegyrize or supplicate, to laugh or ried him beyond even the licence of weep, to accommodate himself to every fiction. Jonson seems to have com-caprice, to lul every suspicion, to

treasure every hint, to be every thing, | again when, exhausted by disease and
to observe every thing, to endure every overwhelmed by misfortunes, which no
thing. High as the art of political in- human prudence could have averted,
trigue had been carried in Italy, these
were times which required it all.

On these arduous errands Machiavelli was frequently employed. He was sent to treat with the King of the Romans and with the Duke of Valentinois. He was twice ambassador at the Court of Rome, and thrice at that of France. In these missions, and in several others of inferior importance, he acquitted himself with great dexterity. His despatches form one of the most amusing and instructive collections extant. The narratives are clear and agreeably written; the remarks on men and things clever and judicious. The conversations are reported in a spirited and characteristic manner. We find ourselves introduced into the presence of the men who, during twenty eventful years, swayed the destinies of Europe. Their wit and their folly, their fretfulness and their merriment, are exposed to us. We are admitted to overhear their chat, and to watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and curious to recognise, in circumstances which elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and shallow cunning of Louis the Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian, cursed with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable hatred of Cæsar Borgia.

he was the prisoner of the deadliest enemy of his house. These interviews between the greatest speculative and the greatest practical statesman of the age are fully described in the Correspondence, and form perhaps the most interesting part of it. From some passages in The Prince, and perhaps also from some indistinct traditions, several writers have supposed a connection between those remarkable men much closer than ever existed. The Envoy has even been accused of prompting the crimes of the artful and merciless tyrant. But from the official documents it is clear that their intercourse, though ostensibly amicable, was in reality hostile. It cannot be doubted, however, that the imagination of Machiavelli was strongly impressed, and his speculations on government coloured, by the observations which he made on the singular character and equally singular fortunes of a man who under such disadvantages had achieved such exploits; who, when sensuality, varied through innumerable forms, could no longer stimulate his sated mind, found a more powerful and durable excitement in the intense thirst of empire and revenge; who emerged from the sloth and luxury of the Roman purple the first prince and general of the age; who, trained in an unwarlike profession, formed a gallant army out of the dregs of an unwarlike people; who, after acquiring sovereignty by destroying his enemies, acquired popularity by destroying his tools; who had begun to employ for the most saluWe have mentioned Cæsar Borgia. tary ends the power which he had atIt is impossible not to pause for a mo-tained by the most atrocious means; ment on the name of a man in whom the political morality of Italy was so strongly personified, partially blended with the sterner lineaments of the Spanish character. On two important occasions Machiavelli was admitted to his society; once, at the moment when Cæsar's splendid villany achieved its most signal triumph, when he caught in one snare and crushed at one blow all his most formidable rivals; and

who tolerated within the sphere of his
iron despotism no plunderer or op-
pressor but himself; and who fell at
last amidst the mingled curses and
regrets of a people of whom his genius
had been the wonder, and might have
been the salvation. Some of those

crimes of Borgia which to us appear
the most odious would not, from causes
which we have already considered.
have struck an Italian of the fifteenth

century with equal horror. Patriotic | of the Peninsula. The wealth which feeling also might induce Machiavelli had been accumulated during centuries 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.

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 of enemies who cried for quarter, or suffocating an unarmed population by thousands in the caverns to which it had fled for safety. Such were the crueltics which daily excited the terror and disgust of a people among whom, till lately, the worst that a soldier had to fear in a pitched battle was the loss of his horse and the expense of his ransom. The swinish intemperance of Switzerland, 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

Machiavelli deeply regretted the misfortunes of his country, and clearly discerned the cause and the remedy. It was the military system of the Italian people which had extinguished their value and discipline, and left their wealth an easy prey to every foreign plunderer. The Secretary projected a scheme alike honourable to his heart and to his intellect, for abolishing the use of mercenary troops, and for or

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. The dread of a foreign yoke, of plunder, massacre, and conflagration, might have conquered that repugnance to military pursuits which both the industry and the idleness of great towns commonly generate. For a time the scheme promised well. The new troops acquitted themselves respectably in the field. Machiavelli looked with parental rapture on the success of his plan, and began to hope that the arms of Italy might once more be formidable to the barbarians of the Tagus and the Rhine. But the tide of misfortune came on before the barriers which should have withstood it were prepared. For a 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 fallen 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 The Swiss and the Spaniards were, submit to the mandates of foreign at that time, regarded as the best powers, to buy over and over again, at soldiers in Europe. The Swiss batan enormous price, what was already talion consisted of pikemen, and bore justly her own, to return thanks for a close resemblance to the Greek phabeing wronged, and to ask pardon for lanx. The Spaniards, like the soldiers being in the righ She was at length of Rome, were armed with the sword

work is in the form of a dialogne. The opinions of the writer are put into the mouth of Fabrizio Colonna, a powerful nobleman of the Ecclesiastical State, and an officer of distinguished merit in the service of the King of Spain. Colonna visits Florence on his way from Lombardy to his own domains. He is invited to meet some friends at the house of Cosimo Rucellai, an amiable and accomplished young man, whose early death Machiavelli feelingly deplores. After partaking of an elegant entertainment, they retire from the heat into the most shady recesses of the garden. Fabrizio is struck by the sight of some uncommon plants. Cosimo says 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 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

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.

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. The Prince traces the progress of an He is inclined to substitute rapid move-ambitious man, the Discourses the proments and decisive engagements for gress of an ambitious people. The the languid and dilatory operations of same principles on which, in the former his countrymen. He attaches very work, the elevation of an individual is little importance to the invention of explained, are applied in the latter, to gunpowder. Indeed he seems to think the longer duration and more complex that it ought scarcely to produce any interest of a society. To a modern change in the mode of arming or of statesman the form of the Discourses disposing troops. The general testi- may appear to be puerile. In truth mony of historians, it must be allowed, Livy is not an historian on whom imseems to prove that the ill-constructed plicit reliance can be placed, even in and ill-served artillery of those times, cases where he must have possessed though useful in a siege, was of little considerable means of information. value on the field of battle. 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.

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