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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 his political scheme, the means had in the Discourses, we have already given been more deeply considered than the our opinion at length. We have at- ends. The great principle, that socictempted to show that it belonged rather ties and laws exist only for the purpose to the age than to the man, that it was of increasing the sum of private happia 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 ge- made 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 toucault, 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. He 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. ruins of their city, to be dragged in But they are errors which a writer, chains to a slave-market, to see one situated like Machiavelli, could scarcely child torn from them to dig in the quaravoid. They arise, for the most part, rics of Sicily, and another to guard the

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. He 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

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 in-very peculiar state of society, could not vaders had brought want to their boards, always enable him to calculate the infamy to their beds, fire to their roofs, effect of institutions differing from those and the knife to their throats. It was of which he had observed the operation. natural that a man who lived in times Montesquieu errs, because he has a fine like these should overrate the import- thing to say, and is resolved to say it. ance of those measures by which a If the phænomena which lie before him nation is rendered formidable to its will not suit his purpose, all history neighbours, and undervalue those which must be ransacked. If nothing estamake it prosperous within itself. blished by authentic testimony can be racked or chipped to suit his Procrustean hypothesis, he puts up with some monstrous fable about Siam, or Bantam, or 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 indicate. 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

affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reason ings. The judicious and candid mind of Machiavelli shows itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language. The style of Montesquien, on the other hand, indicates in every page a lively and ingenious, but an unsound mind. Every trick of expression, from the mysterious conciseness of an oracle to the flippancy of a Parisian coxcomb, is employed to disguise the fallacy of some positions, and the triteness of others. Absurdities are brightened into epigrams; truisms are darkened into enigmas. It is with difficulty that the strongest eye can sustain the glare with which some parts are illuminated, or penetrate the shade in which others are concealed.

The political works of Machiavelli derive a peculiar interest from the mournful earnestness which he manifests whenever he touches on topics connected with the calamities of his native land. It is difficult to conceive any situation more painful than that of a great man, condemned to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption. To this joyless and thankless duty was Machiavelli called. In the energetic language of the prophet, he was "mad for the sight of his eyes which he saw," disunion in the council, effeminacy in the camp, liberty extinguished, commerce decaying, national honour sullied, an enlightened and flourishing people given over to the ferocity of ignorant savages. Though his opinions had not escaped the contagion of that political immorality which was common among his countrymen, his natural disposition seems to have been rather stern and impetuous than pliant and artful. When the misery and degradation of Florence and the foul outrage which he had himself sustained recur to his mind, the smooth craft of his profession and his nation is exchanged for the honest bitterness of scorn and anger. He speaks like one

sick of the calamitous times and abject people among whom his lot is cast. le pines for the strength and glory of ancient Rome, for the fasces of Brutus and the sword of Scipio, the gravity of the curule chair, and the bloody pomp of the triumphal sacrifice. He seems to be transported back to the days when eight hundred thousand Italian warriors sprung to arms at the rumour of a Gallic invasion. He breathes all the spirit of those intrepid and haughty senators who forgot the dearest ties of nature in the claims of public duty, who looked with disdain on the elephants and on the gold of Pyrrhus, and listened with unaltered composure to the tremendous tidings of Cannæ. Like an ancient temple deformed by the barbarous architecture of a later age, his character acquires an interest from the very circumstances which debase it. The original proportions are rendered more striking by the contrast which they present to the mean and incongruous additions.

The influence of the sentiments which we have described was not apparent in his writings alone. His enthusiasm, barred from the career which it would have selected for itself, seems to have found a vent in desperate levity. He enjoyed a vindictive pleasure in outraging the opinions of a society which he despised. He became careless of the decencies which were expected from a man so highly distinguished in the literary and political world. The sarcastic bitterness of his conversation disgusted those who were more inclined to accuse his licentiousness than their own degeneracy, and who were unable to conceive the strength of those emotions which are concealed by the jests of the wretched, and by the follies of the wise.

The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to be considered. The life of Castruccio Castracani will occupy us for a very short time, and would scarcely have demanded our notice, had it not attracted a much greater share of public attention than it deserves. Few books, indeed, could be more interesting than a careful and judicious account, from such a pen, of the illustrious Prince of

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Lucca, the most eminent of those Ita- | which heighten the interest, the words, lian chiefs, who, like Pisistratus and the gestures, the looks, are evidently Gelon, acquired a power felt rather furnished by the imagination of the than seen, and resting, not on law or author. The fashion of later times is on prescription, but on the public fa- different. A more exact narrative is vour and on their great personal qua- given by the writer. It may be doubted lities. Such a work would exhibit to whether more exact notions are conus the real nature of that species of so- veyed to the reader. The best portraits vereignty, so singular and so often mis- are perhaps those in which there is a understood, which the Greeks deno- slight mixture of caricature, and we minated tyranny, and which, modified are not certain that the best histories in some degree by the feudal system, are not those in which a little of the reappeared in the commonwealths of exaggeration of fictitious narrative is Lombardy and Tuscany. But this little judiciously employed. Something is composition of Machiavelli is in no lost in accuracy; but much is gained sense a history. It has no pretensions in effect. The fainter lines are neto fidelity. It is a trifle, and not a glected; but the great characteristic very successful trifle. It is scarcely features are imprinted on the mind for more authentic than the novel of Bel- ever. phegor, and is very much duller.

The last great work of this illustrious man was the history of his native city. It was written by command of the Pope, who, as chief of the house of Medici, was at that time sovereign of Florence. The characters of Cosmo, of Piero, and of Lorenzo, are, however, treated with a freedom and impartiality equally honourable to the writer and to the patron. The miseries and humiliations of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other food, the stairs which are more painful than every other ascent, had not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most corrupting post in a corrupting profession had not depraved the generous heart of Clement.

The History terminates with the death of Lorenzo de' Medici. Machiavelli had, it seems, intended to continue his narrative to a later period. But his death prevented the execution of his design; and the melancholy task of recording the desolation and shame of Italy devolved on Guicciardini.

Machiavelli lived long enough to see the commencement of the last struggle for Florentine liberty. Soon after his death monarchy was finally established, not such a monarchy as that of which Cosmo had laid the foundations deep in the institutions and feelings of his countrymen, and which Lorenzo had embellished with the trophies of every science and every art; but a loathsome tyranny, proud and mean, cruel and The History does not appear to be feeble, bigotted and lascivious. The the fruit of much industry or research.character of Machiavelli was hateful to It is unquestionably inaccurate. But it is elegant, lively, and picturesque, beyond any other in the Italian language. The reader, we believe, carries away from it a more vivid and a more faithful impression of the national character and manners than from more correct accounts. The truth is, that the book belongs rather to ancient than to modern literature. It is in the style, not of Davila and Clarendon, but of Herodotus and Tacitus. The classical histories may almost be called romances founded in fact. The relation is, no doubt, in all its principal points, strictly true. But the numerous little incidents

the new masters of Italy; and those parts of his theory which were in strict accordance with their own daily practice afforded a pretext for blackening his memory. His works were misrepresented by the learned, misconstrued by the ignorant, censured by the church, abused with all the rancour of simulated virtue, by the tools of a base government, and the priests of a baser superstition. The name of the man whose genius had illuminated all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic wisdom an oppressed people had owed their last chance of emancipation and revenge, passed into a proverb of

infamy For more than two hundred mighty battle, to invest with the reality years his bones lay undistinguished. of human flesh and blood beings whom At length, an English nobleman paid we are too much inclined to consider the last honours to the greatest states- as personified qualities in an allegory, man of Florence. In the church of to call up our ancestors before us with Santa Croce a monument was erected all their peculiarities of language, manto his memory, which is contemplated ners, and garb, to show us over their with reverence by all who can dis- houses, to seat us at their tables, to tinguish the virtues of a great mind rummage their old-fashioned wardthrough the corruptions of a dege- robes, to explain the uses of their ponnerate age, and which will be ap- derous furniture, these parts of the proached with still deeper homage when duty which properly belongs to the the object to which his public life was historian have been appropriated by devoted shall be attained, when the the historical novelist. On the other foreign yoke shall be broken, when a hand, to extract the philosophy of second Procida shall avenge the wrongs history, to direct our judgment of events of Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall and men, to trace the connection of restore the good estate of Rome, when causes and effects, and to draw from the streets of Florence and Bologna the occurrences of former times general shall again resound with their ancient lessons of moral and political wisdom, war-cry, Popolo; popolo; muoiano i has become the business of a distinct tiranni! class of writers.

HALLAM. (SEPTEMBER, 1828.) The Constitutional History of England, from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II. By HENRY HALLAM. In 2 vols. 1827.

Of the two kinds of composition into which history has been thus divided, the one may be compared to a map, the other to a painted landscape. The picture, though it places the country before us, does not enable us to ascertain with accuracy the dimensions, the distances, and the angles. The map is not a work of imitative art. It presents no scene to the imagination; but it gives us exact information as to the bearings of the various points, and is a more use ful companion to the traveller or the general than the painted landscape could be, though it were the grandest that ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest over which Claude ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.

HISTORY, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind by a vivid representation of particular characters and incidents. But, in fact, the two hostile elements of which it consists have never been known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at length, in our own time, they have been completely and professedly separated. Good histories, in the proper It is remarkable that the practice of sense of the word, we have not. But separating the two ingredients of which we have good historical romances, and history is composed has become pregood historical essays. The imagina-valent on the Continent as well as in tion and the reason, if we may use a this country. Italy has already prolegal metaphor, have made partition of duced a historical novel, of high merit a province of literature of which they and of still higher promise. In France, were formerly scized per my et per tout; the practice has been carried to a length and now they hold their respective por- somewhat whimsical. M. Sismondi tions in severalty, instead of holding publishes a grave and stately history the whole in common. of the Merovingian Kings, very valuable, and a little tedious. He then sends forth as a companion to it a novel, in which he attempts to give a lively representation of characters and man

To make the past present, to bring the distant near, to place us in the society of a great man or on the eminence which overlooks the field of a

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