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.

The Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the
Discourses the progress of an ambitious people. The same
principles on which, in the former work, the elevation of an
individual is explained, are applied in the latter, to the longer
duration and more complex interest of a society. To a modern
statesman the form of the Discourses may appear to be puerile. In
truth Livy is not an historian on whom implicit reliance can be
placed, even in cases where he must have possessed considerable
means of information. 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.

On the peculiar immorality which has rendered The Prince
unpopular, and which is almost equally discernible in the
Discourses, we have already given our opinion at length. We have
attempted to show that it belonged rather to the age than to the
man, that it was a partial taint, and by no means implied general
depravity. We cannot, however, deny that it is a great blemish,
and that it considerably diminishes the pleasure which, in other
respects, those works must afford to every intelligent mind.