ckle jade, but at least the half our will is free, and if we
are bold we may master her yet. For Fortune is a woman who, to be kept
under, must be beaten and roughly handled, and we see that she is more
ready to be mastered by those who treat her so, than by those who are
shy in their wooing. And always, like a woman, she gives her favours to
the young, because they are less scrupulous and fiercer and more
audaciously command her to their will.

[Sidenote: The Appeal.]

And so at the last the sometime Secretary of the Florentine Republic
turns to the new Master of the Florentines in splendid exhortation. He
points to no easy path. He proposes no mean ambition. He has said
already that 'double will that Prince's glory be, who has founded a new
realm and fortified it and adorned it with good laws, good arms, good
friends, and good examples.' But there is more and better to be done.
The great misery of men has ever made the great leaders of men. But was
Israel in Egypt, were the Persians, the Athenians ever more enslaved,
down-trodden, disunited, beaten, despoiled, mangled, overrun and
desolate than is our Italy to-day? The barbarians must be hounded out,
and Italy be free and one. Now is the accepted time. All Italy is
waiting and only seeks the man. To you the darling of Fortune and the
Church this splendid task is given, to and to the army of Italy and of
Italians only. Arm Italy and lead her. To you, the deliverer, what gates
would be closed, what obedience refused! What jealousies opposed, what
homage denied. Love, courage, and fixed fidelity await you, and under
your standards shall the voice of Petrarch be fulfilled:

Virtu contro al furore
Prendera l'arme e fia il combatter corto:
Che l'antico valore
Negl' Italici cor non e ancor morto.

Such is _The Prince_ of Machiavelli. The vision of its breathless
exhortation seemed then as but a landscape to a blind man's eye. But the
passing of three hundred and fifty years of the misery he wept for
brought at the last, almost in perfect exactness, the fulfilment of that
impossible prophecy.

[Sidenote: The Attack.]

There is no great book in the world of smaller compass than _The Prince_
of Machiavelli. There is no book more lucidly, directly, and plainly
written. There is no book that has aroused more vehement, venomous, and
even truculent controversy from the moment of its publication until
to-day. And it is asserted with great probab