The following excellent rule of life for those in responsible functions is applicable to all times and all stations :—

'Do not make more account of having favour than of having reputation; since, reputation being lost, the benevolence of others is lost with it, in place of which succeeds slight esteem; but he who maintains his reputation finds no want of friends, favour and benevolence.'

To the like effect:

'You cannot have a greater virtue than to keep account of honour, since he who does so fears no dangers, and does no base actions. Hold this point fast therefore, and it will be almost impossible that everything should not succeed well with you.-Expertus loquor.'

It is only fair to suppose that in his more elevated, as in his less elevated utterances, Guicciardini set down for his descendants the real results, as he himself viewed them, of his own personal experience. These he sets forth more specifically as follows:

I have been for eleven successive years employed in governments of the Church, and have enjoyed so much favour with my superiors and the people as well, that I was likely to have remained long in those employments, but for the events which happened in 1527 in Rome and Florence. And I found nothing which established me in them more firmly than proceeding as if I did not care to keep them, since resting on this foundation I did without respect or submission whatever properly belonged to the charge I held, which gave me a reputation that favoured me more, and with more dignity, than any insinuation, interest, or industry I could have used.'

All the evidence derivable from the official correspondence, which forms a large part of the publication before us, goes to verify the character Guicciardini here claims for himself of having carried into servitude itself the spirit of an honourable, if not exalted freedom. In his several and successive vicegerencies for the Vicegerent of Heaven he stoutly contested the abusive privileges and exemptions of ecclesiastics from lay jurisdiction. And he always addressed the popes he successively served in the language of independent counsel.

The following more general political observations bear the stamp of experience, and, like many of our author's, are true for all time:

Things doomed to fall not by force but exhaustion, go on much longer than would have been believed at first, as well because the motions are slower than is supposed, as because men, when they are obstinately resolved to endure the worst, do and suffer much more than would have been believed possible. Thus we have seen that a war which was calculated to come to an end by famine, by hardship,

by want of money, and the like, has lasted longer than would have been believed beforehand. Thus the life of a consumptive patient always prolongs itself beyond the opinion doctors and bystanders have had of it; and a merchant, before he fails by being eaten up with usury, keeps moving longer than was expected."

Things probable probably false.

'I am slow in believing, till I have sure authority, news which are in themselves probable; because, being already in men's conjecture, some one is easily found to forge them; and therefore when I receive any such without a certain author, I suspend belief of them, more than of others of an opposite kind.'

Things universally desired seldom accomplished.

The Marquis of Pescara said to me on the election of Pope Clement VII., that the things which were universally desired were hardly ever accomplished. The reason of this may be that it is the few and not the many that commonly pull the wires which set in motion the affairs of this world, and the ends those have in view are almost always different from the ends of the many, and accordingly produce different effects from those which the many desire.'

In the multitude of counsellors there is no safety.

'Messer Antonio da Venafra was wont to say, and said well-Put seven or eight wise men together, they become so many fools; since not agreeing they rather bring things into dispute than to a conclusion.'

Slow decision good-slow execution bad.

Men cannot be blamed for being a long time in resolving themselves, since, if conjunctures take place at which it is necessary to decide promptly, yet in general he who decides quickly errs rather than he who decides slowly. But what is to be blamed mightily is slowness of execution after a resolution is taken, since it may be said that always hurts and never helps unless by accident.'

Why conspiracies are generally detected.

He who will take notice of the course of combinations and conspiracies may observe that nothing is more ruinous to them than the desire to carry them on too securely, since by this more time is interposed, more men implicated, and more things mixed up with them, which is a cause why practices of that sort are brought to detection. Moreover, it may be believed that Fortune, under whose dominion such things are placed, is angry with those who wish to liberate and secure themselves from her power. I conclude, therefore, that it is safer to execute them with some risk than with much precaution.'

What men ought to do what they probably will do.

In discourses of State I have often seen men make mistakes of judgment; because they set themselves to examine what this or that

prince reasonably ought to do, and not what he is likely to do according to his nature and degree of understanding. He who would judge what, for example, the King of France will do, should have less regard to what a prudent man ought to do than to what may be expected from the nature and habit of a Frenchman.'

Do not let yourself be thrown out of play.

'He who would be a man of action should not let himself be thrown out of the current of affairs, since out of one arises another, as well by the access which the first gives to the second, as by the reputation which being engaged in affairs brings you. To this also may be well applied the proverb-Di cosa nasce cosa.'

It has always been disputed how far the sinister precepts of policy, branded as Machiavellian, are to be charged to the character of the great Florentine Secretary or to that of his age -in what degree the maxims stigmatized by that name were accepted or reprobated by the better-reputed authorities of those times. Machiavelli and Guicciardini were contemporary politicians, private correspondents, and personal friends, notwithstanding the most marked contrast of character, and thence of career. It may be affirmed on the evidence of the volumes. before us that the latter had no disposition to countenance the cool atrocity of the wholesale recipes for extirpating enemies by foul or fair means, which the former generalized, with such shocking unconcern, from the prevalent practices of his age. In an elaborate criticism of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy,' now first published in these volumes, Guicciardini remarks that extraordinary and violent political remedies always beyond measure please his author [Machiavelli]. It would be difficult to conceive the former looking on, as the latter seems to have done, in his mission from the Florentine republic to Cæsar Borgia, at the preparations making for the immortally infamous surprise and slaughter of Sinigaglia. But it nevertheless appears, on the evidence of the 'Ricordi' before us, that one of the most respectable administrators and authors of his age, as Guicciardini certainly was, was considerably infected, albeit in a milder form, with what this age terms Machiavellism. The following sentences from the source above cited sufficiently establish that fact.

Machiavellic maxim of politic falsehood.

Make a practice of denying what you do not wish to be known, or affirming what you wish to be believed, since, whatever probabilities, or whatever certainties there may be to the contrary, a bold affirmative or negative often puts him who hears you off the scent.'

Machiavellic maxim of government.

'The government of States cannot be carried on according to

conscience,

conscience, because to any one who considers their origin they have all been founded on violence-with the exception of republics in their own country, and not elsewhere. I do not except from this rule the Emperor, and still less the priests, whose violence is double, as they coerce you at once with arms temporal and spiritual.'

Machiavellic maxim of affected reticence.

A prince, or he who is engaged in great affairs, not only should keep secret things which it is well should not be known, but should besides caution himself and his ministers to keep silence on things even the least and seemingly the least important, except those which it is well should be known. Thus your acts and intentions not being known to those about you, or to your subjects, men stand ever in suspense and as it were amazed, and every little motion and step of yours is observed.'

Machiavellic maxim of fair public pretexts.

'One of the greatest good fortunes men can have is to have fair occasion to show that they have been moved by pure regard to the public weal in those things, which they do to promote their own proper interest. It was that which made glorious the enterprises of the Catholic King which-while they were all entered on for his own grandeur or security-often seemed engaged in either for the extension of the Christian faith, or for the defence of the Church.'

Machiavellic maxim of 'Bide your time.'

A governor of nations should guard as much as possible against showing hatred to any one, or taking vengeance of any displeasure done to him, since it brings too much odium on him to employ the public arm against private injuries. Let him only take patience and bide his time, since it is impossible that he should not frequently find occasion to effect the same end justifiably and without imputation of

rancour.'

Machiavellic maxim to be observed by princes.

'Let princes take care not to lead their subjects into the next degree to liberty, since men naturally desire to be free, and no one ordinarily continues content with his position, but every one always seeks to advance beyond that in which he finds himself, and these appetites have more power with men in general than the memory of the goodfellowship that prince has shown them, or the benefits received at his hands.'

The painstaking and patriotic editor of the volumes before us indulges largely, in his introductory chapters, in elaborate parallels between the two last public men of Italy in the sixteenth century-Machiavelli and Guicciardini-who could properly be called so, as still speaking the language of Italian public sentiment. And very curious are some of the parallels he finds for them in ancient history. To Guicciardini,' he says, must be

conceded

conceded the primacy of profound political intuition; to Machiavelli subtle penetration into the arcana imperii, and vital forces of states, as well as into the no less intricate mysteries of the human heart. The former concentrated all his faculties upon one focus; he might be entitled, by no fanciful analogy, the Cato of writers, as the latter might be designated as the Alcibiades.'

Neither Alcibiades nor Cato, so far as history tells of them, can well be conceived by any but a modern Italian imagination to have furnished parallels on any one point of character to Machiavelli and Guicciardini-unless it should be said that the loose morality of the Athenian Eupatrid might, in some measure, be attributed to the life and writings of the Florentine popolano. But Guicciardini and Cato! Which Cato? Not that one, at any rate, by whom the proud memorial was merited

'Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.'

All the pains taken by our editor (who also edited, some years back, such of the official and other writings of Machiavelli as had remained unpublished) to wash perfectly white the political ethics of both are pains utterly thrown away. If he had urged that Machiavelli merely generalised his maxims of politics from an unexaggerated induction of the most successful strokes of State-craft and State-crime-that Guicciardini had no other course open to his ardour for action and advancement than to spend his last years in the service of bad masters, to whom he tendered as good counsel as they would take-he would have pleaded fair excuse for their shortcomings of the more elevated moral standards set up in later times; though, in truth, later times have not always been entitled to write AntiMachiavels,' especially when royal fingers held the pen. And the Parisian dispensers of European reputation, in the days of Frederick and Catherine, never flattered more grossly sovereigns whose ways of acquiring or extending power would assuredly have taxed Machiavellic cynicism to excuse them—even in Machiavelli's age-than by ascribing to them pure and exalted abhorrence of Machiavellic doctrine.

In point of style, the perfect unaffectedness and directness of thought and utterance certainly may be admitted to set the antique classic stamp on Machiavelli's writings. It is the mappnoía of old Greece transferred to the troubled and lurid dawn of modern Italy. For the rest, it must be acknowledged that the main scope of Machiavelli's public acts and writings was that of Italian independence by Italian arms under Italian leadership. Small blame to an Italian patriot who had seen the soil of Italy twice overrun and twice soaked in the blood of its sons

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