who said that Machiavelli tells us what princes do, not what they ought to do.  When Machiavelli takes Caesar Borgia as a model, he in nowise extols him as a hero, but merely as a prince who was capable of attaining the end in view.  The life of the State was the primary object.  It must be maintained.  And Machiavelli has laid down the principles, based upon his study and wide experience, by which this may be accomplished.  He wrote from the view-point of the politician,—­not of the moralist.  What is good politics may be bad morals, and in fact, by a strange fatality, where morals and politics clash, the latter generally gets the upper hand.  And will anyone contend that the principles set forth by Machiavelli in his Prince or his Discourses have entirely perished from the earth?  Has diplomacy been entirely stripped of fraud and duplicity?  Let anyone read the famous eighteenth chapter of The Prince:  “In what Manner Princes should keep their Faith,” and he will be convinced that what was true nearly four hundred years ago, is quite as true to-day.

Of the remaining works of Machiavelli the most important is the History of Florence written between 1521 and 1525, and dedicated to Clement VII.  The first book is merely a rapid review of the Middle Ages, the history of Florence beginning with Book II.  Machiavelli’s method has been censured for adhering at times too closely to the chroniclers like Villani, Cambi, and Giovanni Cavalcanti, and at others rejecting their testimony without apparent reason, while in its details the authority of his History is often questionable.  It is the straightforward, logical narrative, which always holds the interest of the reader that is the greatest charm of the History.  Of the other works of Machiavelli we may mention here his comedies the Mandragola and Clizia, and his novel Belfagor.

After the downfall of the Republic and Machiavelli’s release from prison in 1513, fortune seems never again to have favoured him.  It is true that in 1520 Giuliano de’ Medici commissioned him to write his History of Florence, and he afterwards held a number of offices, yet these latter were entirely beneath his merits.  He had been married in 1502 to Marietta Corsini, who bore him four sons and a daughter.  He died on June 22, 1527, leaving his family in the greatest poverty, a sterling tribute to his honesty, when one considers the many opportunities he doubtless had to enrich himself.  Machiavelli’s life was not without blemish—­few lives are.  We must bear in mind the atmosphere of craft, hypocrisy, and poison in which he lived,—­his was the age of Caesar Borgia and of Popes like the monster Alexander VI. and Julius II.  Whatever his faults may have been, Machiavelli was always an ardent patriot and an earnest supporter of popular government.  It is true that he was willing to accept a prince, if one could be found courageous enough and prudent enough to unite dismembered Italy, for in the unity of his native land he saw the only hope of its salvation.