rait jamais que transitoire, et devrait faire place
a un gouvernement libre des que la grande reforme nationale et sociale
serait accomplie.--Il a parfaitement conscience du mal. L'atmosphere
ambiante de son siecle et de son pays n'a nullement oblitere son sens
moral--Il a si bien conscience de l'enormite de ces crimes, qu'il la
condamne hautement lorsque la derniere necessite ne les impose pas."

Among these utterances of capable and distinguished men, it will be seen
that some are partially true, and others, without a particle of truth,
are at least representative and significant, and serve to bring
Machiavelli within fathomable depth. He is the earliest conscious and
articulate exponent of certain living forces in the present world.
Religion, progressive enlightenment, the perpetual vigilance of public
opinion, have not reduced his empire, or disproved the justice of his
conception of mankind. He obtains a new lease of life from causes that
are still prevailing, and from doctrines that are apparent in politics,
philosophy, and science. Without sparing censure, or employing for
comparison the grosser symptoms of the age, we find him near our common
level, and perceive that he is not a vanishing type, but a constant and
contemporary influence. Where it is impossible to praise, to defend, or
to excuse, the burden of blame may yet be lightened by adjustment and
distribution, and he is more rationally intelligible when illustrated by
lights falling not only from the century he wrote in, but from our own,
which has seen the course of its history twenty-five times diverted by
actual or attempted crime.

VIII

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH'S IRISH HISTORY[322]

When Macaulay republished his Essays from the _Edinburgh Review_, he had
already commenced the great work by which his name will be remembered;
and he had the prudence to exclude from the collection his early paper
on the art of historical writing. In the maturity of his powers, he was
rightly unwilling to bring into notice the theories of his youth. At a
time when he was about to claim a place among the first historians, it
would have been injudicious to remind men of the manner in which he had
described the objects of his emulation or of his rivalry--how in his
judgment the speeches of Thucydides violate the decencies of fiction,
and give to his book something of the character of the Chinese
pleasure-grounds, whilst his political observations are very
superficial; h