barbarous architecture of a later age, his character acquires an
interest from the very circumstances which debase it. The
original proportions are rendered more striking by the contrast
which they present to the mean and incongruous additions.

The influence of the sentiments which we have described was not
apparent in his writings alone. His enthusiasm, barred from the
career which it would have selected for itself, seems to have
found a vent in desperate levity. He enjoyed a vindictive
pleasure in outraging the opinions of a society which he
despised. He became careless of the decencies which were expected
from a man so highly distinguished in the literary and political
world. The sarcastic bitterness of his conversation disgusted
those who were more inclined to accuse his licentiousness than
their own degeneracy, and who were unable to conceive the
strength of those emotions which are concealed by the jests of
the wretched, and by the follies of the wise.

The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to be
considered. The Life of Castruccio Castracani will occupy us for
a very short time, and would scarcely have demanded our notice,
had it not attracted a much greater share of public attention
than it deserves. Few books, indeed, could be more interesting
than a careful and judicious account, from such a pen, of the
illustrious Prince of Lucca, the most eminent of those Italian
chiefs who, like Pisistratus and Gelon, acquired a power felt
rather than seen, and resting, not on law or on prescription, but
on the public favour and on their great personal qualities. Such
a work would exhibit to us the real nature of that species of
sovereignty, so singular and so often misunderstood, which the