not gain them over to my side, I should have only myself to blame." To this end, he proposes to present them his book as evidence, that, during the fifteen years of his public service, he had neither been idle nor asleep.

The great point of intention being indisputably cleared, there remain but two questions for consideration;—the character of the means which Machiavelli offers to his expected patrons,-and the propriety of his conduct in attempting to strengthen that tyranny, against which his whole life had been an uninterrupted opposition.

That Machiavelli was not a man of loose and abandoned principles, must be evident, on the bare perusal of his works. Nearly sixty octavo pages have been filled by one of his admirers with sentiments of such pure morality and high-toned patriotism, extracted from his writings, as must exempt him from a charge of deliberate corruption : and, notwithstanding all that can justly be objected against his works, enough remains of political philosophy, to give them a value, so long as man shall live in society, and governments be subjected to domestic treason and external force. It was the misfortune of Machiavelli to have lived and taken an active part in affairs at an epoch of civilization, at which mankind had abandoned the simpler instinctive virtues, without having acquired that regulated and balanced action, which results from well understood self-interests, and sound political institutions. religion, powerful in its abuses, and feeble in its influence on morals, had prepared the mind for the reception of the most false and dangerous axioms. A race of upstart military despots had overturned the republican governments which had parcelled and divided Italy; and the smallness of their territories favouring personal rivality, and occasioning frequent changes of fortune, opened a wide door to the fiercer passions, and rendered a contempt of all faith, and the most atrocious criminality, the favourite engines of state policy: while the poniard and the drugged bowl were regarded as useful, and even necessary agents, in the attainment of personal security and political preponderance.

A

In the better part of his life, Machiavelli, engaged in the affairs of the Florentine republic, was the near witness of its unavailing struggle against subjection; and he sought in the historian of free and triumphant Rome for examples and axioms to guide his countrymen in the support of liberty and national independence. Political economy and the philosophy of legislation, which are but now becoming a popular subject of inquiry, had not then entered into the conception of statesmen. The notion that "true self-love and social are the same," and that the interests of all mankind are alike, formed no part of political speculations; nor indeed was any theoretical scheme of polity known, except those philosophical reveries, which, alike impractical and visionary, were read only to be forgotten in the business of life. It was therefore in the true spirit of the Baconian method that Machiavelli commenced his researches; and whether he commented on the history of Rome, or noted the more dreadful crimes of Italian despotism, he worked the problem of national prosperity with a deliberate calmness, analyzing the influence of conduct upon public events without reference to their moral character, treating religion merely in its influence on the state, and regarding the brightest attributes of morality, and the most debasing wickedness, only as they may be the moyens de parvenir, and

applicable to the exigencies of a given contingency. Thus, in treating of the turbulence of the Roman citizens, he considers only the balance of evils between external and internal weakness; and thus he praises Numa for the imposition he practised on the people, observing that no successful legislator had ever existed, who did not give his institutions the sanction of divine authority. In the thirteenth chapter of the second book of his discourses on Livy, he expressly declares his belief, that a prince who wishes to effect great successes, should in the first place learn to deceive; for though many have arisen from humble fortunes to sovereign rule, by mere fraud, none ever arrived at empire, by the unassisted power of open and ingenuous force.

In all these results it is evident that Machiavelli merely repeated the lessons of experience, and displayed things as they actually were. The turn of his intellect and the bent of his character are obviously practical; and himself a statesman, he shares the common error of his class, respecting political morality. The routine of office has in all ages been unfavourable to enlarged and philosophical views. The personal conviction it affords of the facilities of corruption, and of the small quantity of talent and energy necessary to keep the state machine in movement, when the impetus is once given, necessarily engenders low and erroneous notions of expediency and intrigue: and those who have best known the interior of cabinets, have been the most earnest in recommending temporising expediency, and in denying honesty and philosophy. The great combinations which operate the rise and fall of nations, are best observed from a distance; and those who are involved in the details of affairs, cannot embrace the whole series of consequences which change national character and dig the graves of empires. Those, therefore, whom birth or accident places at the head of governments, become readily vacillating in principle, and feeble and corrupt in practice. A transitory success of false and criminal measures disguises the inherent and indefeasible connexion of cause and effect, and leads to an hasty conclusion, that accident prevails over design, and that poetical justice is foreign to the actual government of a world of realities.

By religion, by education, and by example, Machiavelli was estranged from that abstracted and soaring virtue, which forms to itself an archetypal perfection, with the principles of which there is no admissible compromise, and from the practice of which there is no pardonable deviation. To the sentiment of morality, in common with the other statesmen of his day, he seems to have been a stranger; and the terrible example of the successes of the Borgia family, whose crimes he so frequently quotes with complacency, were enough indeed to shake the constancy of credulity itself. In the condition in which Italy then stood, a knowledge of what was doing and had been done, was necessary, at least as a piece of defensive armour, in the battle for independence; and Machiavelli's anatomy of the abuses of the times was the more necessary, because information was less diffused than at present, and there was no diurnal press to drag to light the motives and actions of conflicting tyrants.

To try the opinions of such a writer by the more enlightened philosophy of our own times, would be neither candid nor useful; yet it may be doubted whether those who have conducted British affairs from

the period of the breach with America, have not been guided, in some periods of their rule, by maxims as false and antisocial as any which are sprinkled through the pages of "the Prince :" and most assuredly there is nothing in the whole round of Machiavelism, which can compete with the deliberate falsehood, the blasphemous hypocrisy, and coldblooded sacrifice of humanity to the selfish passions of the right-lined few, which have rendered the Holy Alliance a marked epoch in the history of human degradation and suffering.

The portraiture which Machiavelli has drawn of kingly government, if it be not amiable, is at least veracious; and, if it be compared with contemporary history, it may even be censured as feeble. Such, however, as it is, it is no longer dangerous. The same means, by which tyrant overthrew tyrant, are unavailing when opposed to the illumination and activity of civilized Europeans. It is impossible to contemplate the march of passing events without being convinced, that the straight line is the shortest possible in politics as in mathematics; and that the crimes of governments are the sure sources of their heaviest miscarriages.

With respect to the subserviency of Machiavelli to the Medici, and the means he adopted for ingratiating himself with the betrayers of his country, by offering them the fruits of his political experience, there can scarcely exist two opinions; but the degree of blame with which his falling off may be visited, must be measured by each individual according to his own purity, attempered by that compassion which his sympathy for human frailty may be capable of exciting. There is a period in the life of man at which the mind grows fatigued with an unavailing contest against corruption; and there are degrees of oppression, against which even fortitude itself may be unable to contend. The combination of both these circumstances seems to have operated in changing the politics of this unfortunate man, in the latter days of his life. The picture which he himself gives of his own miserable condition, can scarcely be perused without a tear. Poor, neglected, and abandoned; condemned to seek a temporary solace in the lowest company, * and to repose his wearied intellects by retreating from Livy and Tacitus to the conversation of butchers and millers; harassed alike by remembrances of the past and fears for the future, his desire to seek from the protection of the Medici, by that time the uncontrollable masters of the republic, bread and security for the little remnant of his existence, if not exempt from blame, is still a pardonable weakness. Let him who is without political offence throw the first stone; but, ere he reprobates the want of a stoical indifference in Machiavelli, let him heap a double measure of obloquy on the successful traitors, who, in overturning the independence of Florence, wreaked their unmanly vengeance on the fortunes and person of the unsuccessful patriot.

That Machiavelli had conceived the project of directing the enor

* Mangiato che ho ritorno nel osteria. Quì è l'oste per l'ordinario un beccajo, un mugnajo, due fornacciai. Con questi io m' ingoglioffo per tutto dì, giocando a cricca, a trictrac, e dove nascono mille contese e mille dispetti de' parole ingiuriose ; ed il più delle volte si combatte un quatrino, e siamo sentiti non di manco gridare da San Casciano. Così rinvolto in questa viltà, traggo il cervello di muffa, e sfogo la malignità de questa mia sorte; sendo contento mi calpesti per quella via, per vedere se la sene vergogna. Lettera a F. Vittori.

mous power of the Medici, against the foreign invaders of Italy, is almost proved by the last chapter of "the Prince." His idea of thus turning to a patriotic account a calamity he had in vain struggled to avert, is pregnant with political wisdom; and it derives an additional interest from its coincidence with the opinion of many enlightened Italians of the present day, who have been tempted to look even abroad for a major force to consolidate Italy into one nation, and thus to prepare the seeds of a future independence. Such an idea as this must have powerfully tended to reconcile Machiavelli to the loss of a municipal and republican freedom, which external force and internal corruption had alike rendered precarious, bloody, and turbulent; and at the same time it affords the best apology for that political tergiversation, which casts so deep a shadow on the close of a long life, intrepid patriotism, and active service. Be this, however, as it may, the spectacle which Machiavelli offers in his old age, worn out with fatigue and disappointment, surviving the liberty he adored, and the firmness of soul which ranked him amongst the most splendid patriots of a splendid age, affords a memorable lesson of the instability of human affairs, the vanity of human hopes, and the necessity of judging conduct, under all circumstances, with charity and moderation. M.

CONSTANTINOPLE.

In ancient days, when on for Salem's wall
The avenger came at Heaven's mysterious call,
Portents and signs arose to every eye,

Marks were on earth and meteors in the sky;
Dreams scared the old, and visions struck the young,
And every tomb or temple found a tongue;

The dead walk'd forth-the living heard their call,
And if they fell, they fell forewarn'd of all.

-Not such the signs that in her hour of gloom

Came to foretell Byzantium of her doom;

Not such the marks, that warn'd her of her fate,
When the besieger thunder'd at her gate,
When every dreary morn's returning light
Gave but the Crescent glittering in her sight,

When from her towers in grief she mark'd below
Myriads of warriors, and in each a foe;
Hordes from all realms in wild barbaric pride,
Loading the land and swarming on the tide.
-Still though no deep mysterious sign was given,
To speak the anger or the aid of Heaven;
Though no dread warning stood exposed in air,
To lend the lost the firmness of despair,
Even though no spectre rose upon the eye,
To teil the recreant 'twas not hard to die-
Yet was there one, who in that day of grief
Gazed round all hopeless, reckless of relief.
Ere the first weak one at the breach gave way,
Untold he traced the hurrying of decay,
Unwarn'd he felt that ruin mark'd the wall,
That strife was vain-and he had but to fall-
That the long glories of his race were past-
But his it was to guard them to the last.

This thought-this task-this wretchedness was thine,
Injured, unaided, martyr'd Constantine!

F.

GRIMM'S GHOST.

LETTER XI.

THE Clubs of London, in their variety and hostility, resemble the Clans of Scotland. The Highland lass ridicules the Lowland lads. So the spurred and booted member of Brookes's, casting an eye of scorn up the vista of Albemarle-street, dubs the Alfred a congress of bluestocking old women. The Union sets at nought the Verulam, while the brethren of the latter think that, with the title of Lord Bacon, they have exclusively inherited no small portion of his learning and sagacity. The Beef steak club meets under the roof of the Lyceum; Rich, its founder, was proprietor of Covent-garden theatre: e-go, its members must eat and drink within Thespian walls. Partridge would have dubbed this a non sequitur; but logic in his day was only in its infancy. The Thespian club assembles at Molard's tavern in Great Russell-street. Every syllable there uttered must smack of the sidescene. If you drink with your neighbour, it is "Measure for Measure.” In raising the glass you exclaim, "So the King drinks to Hamlet:" and if you differ in opinion with the gentleman who sits next to you, you ejaculate with Marc Antony, "O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth." The two coteries last-mentioned pique themselves upon their intellects, and speak with utter scorn of the Eccentrics in Maidenlane, who black their faces with burned cork: while the latter shrug their shoulders at the bare mention of the Catamarans, where merit consists in mere noise; and from whose symposium in Martlet-court are heard the heart-quailing sounds of brass pans, mail-horns, shricks, yells, and gunpowder explosions.

Not the least singular establishment of this kind is the "Unsuccessful" club at the Bedford, so called from its members having failed in dramatic writing. One damned farce entitles a man to be a member, instanter. If his comedy be withdrawn after the second night, he must be ballotted for. But if his tragedy be hissed off during the first act, he comes in by acclamation, and may order what dinner he pleases. The perpetual president, with a silver catcall at his button-hole, attained that eminence by a long career of damnation. He proudly boasts that, during a seven years' probation, his most endurable dramatic bantling was a melodrame that set every body asleep. He counts his hisses as a warrior does his wounds, and hopes in time, by dint of bad acting, to make the people in the pit tear up the benches. The last association, upon which I shall rather dilate, is called the Epigram Club. Young Culpepper, whom I immortalized in my letter previous to the last, is a member. At the close of that epistle I left him with his family, and the elegant Captain Augustus Thackeray, prepared to adjourn on the following evening to the Adelphi theatre to witness the performance of Tom and Jerry. Five in number, they mounted a hackney coach. The captain, ashamed of his coadjutors, shrank back, and dreaded recognition all the way from Ludgate-hill to the corner of Cecil-street. It was a vain apprehension: every man calling himself a Christian at half after six is dressing for dinner. The coach drew up opposite Adam-street. Surprised at the quietness of the rabble, the party dismounted, and on going up to the door of the