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Example of Dr. Arnold worthy of Imitation.

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we bestow on the intellect alone. Let this then be understood and held up and insisted on, to all teachers, all scholars, and all schools, and very much will be gained.

Happy is the pupil, happy also the school, which is blessed with a teacher whose own scholarship and character combined, exert on all within his reach, a kindling and inspiring influence; the very contact of whose mind and the magic of whose presence wakes, as by an electric fire, the intellect and the manhood of his pupils; who creates intellect and creates character by the strength, the justness and the ardor of his own. Such a man was the late Dr. Arnold, an eminent and inspiring example to all scholars and all teachers, the record of whose life should be held in the memory of all such, till a brighter example shall arise. It was his to dwell in the past with the accurate knowledge of the exactest and the most thorough scholarship, and yet be alive to the present, as an earnest man,-to concern himself with the readings of Thucydides, the minutest point respecting Rome, with the enthusiasm of the merest man of books; and to engage upon the great questions which agitated England, with all the eagerness of one who had forgotten his books forever, in the hot and busy strife of politics. It was his to be interested alike in the drill of the class-room, the sports of the play-ground, and the adventurous and exciting ramble through swamp and wood. It was for him to rejoice in that nice appreciation of the classics, which the master of the ancient tongues alone possesses, and to esteem the study of the classics of highest value, as they enabled his pupils to read with higher enthusiasm and a better taste their own English writers. It was his as a teacher, to strive earnestly to make his pupils scholars, and still more earnestly if possible to make them men, and through the men whom he sent to the university, to spread himself over all England. What was highest and best of all, it was his peculiar glory to be as wakeful as a boy to all that was good in the present life, and yet to keep an eye open full and clear upon the things which faith beholds in the world which is to be, and to demonstrate by his own example and his own success, that a life of letters may be a life of the manliest and most fervent piety, and that a school of literary training may bring the best appliances to form the noblest Christian character. Would that his name might be honored and his example imitated in all the schools of our land.

VOL. III. No. 9.

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ARTICLE VI.

THE TIMES, CHARACTER AND POLITICAL SYSTEM OF
MACHIAVELLI.1

By Daniel R. Goodwin, Professor of Languages, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me.

AMONG the most remarkable phenomena of mediaeval history, may be reckoned the rise and fall of the Italian republics. In the course of what, for most of Europe, was the night of the dark ages, Italy, by a more rapid revolution, had its own early night; then its dawn, its noon, and its second decline; another cloud of darkness gathering over it just as the returning light was chasing away the lingering shades of barbarism from the rest of Europe. It was midnight in Italy when it was but evening in Britain and France; again it was morning in Italy when it was hardly midnight in the neighboring countries.

As early as the 13th century Italy contained an almost incredible number of separate republics-independent cities, some of which were respectively possessed of greater wealth, power and foreign influence than England, France or Spain. Their merchants were princes, the islands and coasts of the sea their possessions, the whole commercial world their tributaries. Literature and the arts also shone forth with a short but magnificent effulgence. The great poem of Dante-one name for all, was written about the year 1300, in a language which differs not so much from that now spoken in Italy, as Shakspeare's does from the present ordinary English; while in Dante's time the English language could hardly be said to exist.

1 Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, 10 vols. 8vo.; Firenze, per Niccolò Conti, 1818.

Besides the Preface of the learned editor to the above mentioned collection of Machiavelli's Works, the authorities consulted in the preparation of this Article are, among others, Botta, Guicciardini, Sismondi and Tiraboschi. Some of the passages translated from these authors, and interwoven into the text are not accompanied with any marks of acknowledgment. Particular references to volume and page have not been thought necessary. And, perhaps, it is equally unnecessary to add, that for the opinions, whether true or false, expressed and defended in this Article, the writer alone is responsible. The subject, though not coming within the narrowest scope of this Review, will be found to have many points of contact with its general objects.

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The Republics of Italy and their Fate.

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While the great warlike and maritime republics of Venice and Genoa were under an aristocratic form of government, Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Verona, Padua, Milan, Parma, Mantua and a host more, were democracies more or less pure. In the course of time, Florence subjected or subordinated to herself most of the other Tuscan republics. In her most flourishing periods her wealth was almost incredible. Her revenues were many times greater than those of the crown of England. Some idea of her population may be gathered from the fact that in the great plague of 1348, which has been immortalized by the Description and the Decameron of Boccaccio, more than 100,000 of her inhabitants died; and again, in the long mortality which prevailed from 1522 to 1527, of which Machiavelli has left an almost equally graphic description, more than 250,000 of her citizens perished; and in six months of the year 1527, there died within her walls no less than 40,000 persons. Yet she survived, and, but for other causes, might have soon recovered from the blow.

Like all the other democratic republics, Florence was subject to many violent revolutions, constantly torn by factions, often under the control of tyrants; but her liberties were not entirely extinguished till 1530, when the overwhelming power of Austria, instigated and backed by the pope, finally reduced the city and gave it into the hands of the Medicean family, who had been exiled as dangerous citizens, and who soon after their return assumed the title of Dukes. Here ends the history, not only of the Italian republics, but of the Italian nation.

As to the rest of the democratic cities, before the 14th century they had all fallen under the iron rule of signori, i. e. lords or tyrants, who have been not inaptly compared to the men that sprung from the serpent's teeth sown by Cadmus, and that went on fighting one another until they were all killed. Foreign allies were called in to decide their contests. Italy, which had recov ered from the desolations of Goths and Vandals, and become once more the garden of Europe, was made the battle-field and warprize of the most powerful nations of Christendom. Rome, that had often been captured by the barbarians in the early part of the Christian era, never was so savagely treated by any of them, as when sacked by the troops of Charles V. in the 15th century.

The republics of Italy and those of Greece present a striking analogy in their character, history and fate; with this important difference, that while those of Greece were subjugated by a sin

gle master, Philip of Macedon, who was himself proud to be called a Greek; those of Italy were a bone of contention for the neighboring potentates, who had all learned to despise the Italian name, and who seem to have conspired to do their utmost to degrade still lower the object of their contempt.

Machiavelli was born at Florence in 1469, and died in 1527. A contemporary of Christopher Columbus and Martin Luther, his life corresponds precisely with one of the greatest crises the history of Europe has ever experienced-one of the most fortunate crises, too, in many respects, though some of its results are not a little to be regretted.

At this period all was in movement and expectation. There was a universal longing and struggling for light and liberty. The mind of Christendom, roused from the stupor of its long slumber to a state of semi-consciousness, shook violently off the shackles of superstition and ghostly tyranny, though in the convulsive effort of blind impulse and gigantic might, what wonder if in too many instances it shook off also the wholesome restraints of truth and soberness and legitimate authority? With instinctive repugnance it stripped away the garments of corruption, whose loathsome aspect met the dim vision of its opening eyes; but what wonder, if with them, in its hasty zeal, it rejected, in too many instances, the decent habiliments of social fitness and beauty?

Physical science lighted her torch, and speculation sealed up her visions; the secular spirit ascended the throne of human affairs, while the predominance of the religious idea (in external institutions) passed away. Common sense began her reign. New worlds were discovered. Commerce was extended. The fine arts rose to their highest pitch of splendor. In short, so great was the change, that many historians have considered the discovery of America, as the most appropriate epoch from which to date the commencement of modern history.

But while this was in many respects, and especially in material well-being, the period of general renovation for Europe; for Italy it was the season of unmingled degradation and accelerated decline. Language fails to convey an idea of the deep-seated and wide-spread corruption, and of the inextricable, infinite confusion of Italian society at this period. St. Paul's terrible description of the state of the heathen world before the introduction of Christianity, never could have applied more exactly in all its lineaments, parts and particulars to any people or state of society than to the Italians of this period. They were addicted to vile

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Profligacy of Italian Society in his Time.

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affections and to the most debasing lusts and vices; being filled with all unrighteousness, licentiousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful; who, knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death, and adding to that catalogue of vices the most presumptuous hypocrisy, not only did the same and had pleasure in them which did them, but professed to be Christians, to be the very centre and model of Christianity-nay, to contain the very head of the corner and key. stone of the Christian edifice. Popes administered poison to cardinals, and cardinals conspired against the lives of popes; princes disarmed their foes by treachery and then murdered them in cold blood; cardinals' caps were sold to the highest bidder; even the pontifical tiara in two flagrant instances, those of Alexander VI. and Clement VII, (Julius IL and Leo X. might be added to the number,) was bargained for and bought with gold. Varchi, the most indulgent contemporary historian acknowledges that Clement was elected with manifest simony.

Treaties sanctioned by the most solemn oaths in war, impu. dently violated in peace, ostentatious luxury and licentiousness, unblushing incest, fraud boasting openly of its exploits, virtue everywhere neglected or oppressed, right trampled on by force, prostitution, violence, assassinations, increasing the more as they were the more notorious and sure of impunity or even honorthese, says a modern Italian Professor of History, offer to the pencil of the historian such a deep coloring of baseness, that he must needs soften or reduce it, or his tale would be incredible, not to say intolerable.

This was the age of Caesar Borgia, a natural son of pope Alexander VI; endowed with extraordinary talents, but probably the most monstrous specimen of depravity that ever existed under the human form. Fratricide and incest were the A B C of his morals, poison and the dagger his escutcheon. He never made a promise with any other design than that he might gain an ad. vantage by breaking it. He acquired sovereignty by assassinating his rivals, and popularity by destroying his tools; and "he 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."

This was the age too of Lucretia Borgia, daughter of the same

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