follows that a similar judgment would be just in the case of an
Italian of the middle ages. On the contrary, we frequently find
those faults which we are accustomed to consider as certain
indications of a mind altogether depraved, in company with great
and good qualities, with generosity, with benevolence, with
disinterestedness. From such a state of society, Palamedes, in
the admirable dialogue of Hume, might have drawn illustrations of
his theory as striking as any of those with which Fourli
furnished him. These are not, we well know, the lessons which
historians are generally most careful to teach, or readers most
willing to learn. But they are not therefore useless. How Philip
disposed his troops at Chaeronea, where Hannibal crossed the
Alps, whether Mary blew up Darnley, or Siquier shot Charles the
Twelfth, and ten thousand other questions of the same
description, are in themselves unimportant. The inquiry may amuse
us, but the decision leaves us no wiser. He alone reads history
aright who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the
feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues
and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is
accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential
and immutable.

In this respect no history suggests more important reflections
than that of the Tuscan and Lombard commonwealths. The character
of the Italian statesman seems, at first sight, a collection of
contradictions, a phantom as monstrous as the portress of hell in
Milton, half divinity, half snake, majestic and beautiful above,
grovelling and poisonous below, We see a man whose thoughts and
words have no connection with each other, who never hesitates at
an oath when he wishes to seduce, who never wants a pretext when