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 eye 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 no escaped the
contagion of that political immorality which was common among his
countrymen, his natural disposition seem 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. He 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 Cannae. Like an ancient temple deformed by the