cruelly disappointed of their selfish
expectations, is impossible.

[1] Printed in _Arch. Stor. It._ Appendice No. 22, vol. vl.

Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the
Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory;
and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life were
spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian,
resident ambassador at the Courts of Julius and Leo, ambassador together
with Filippo Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome on
the election of Clement. He had therefore, like Machiavelli and
Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of
the men whose characters he weighed in his _Sommario_, and of obtaining
a faithful account of the events which he related. He deserves a place
upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter
V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi,
had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than
theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini
and Machiavelli. Some of the most precious compositions of the latter
are letters addressed from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco
Vettori, at the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to gain
the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acuteness, the cynical
philosophy of life, the definite judgment of men, the clear
comprehension of events, which we trace in Machiavelli, are to be found
in Vettori. Vettori, however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he
writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Machiavellian
philosophy was not peculiar to that great man, but was shared by many
inferior thinkers. Florentine culture at the end of the fifteenth
century culminated in these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who
only saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by cynicism or
skepticism to lose their interest in the game of politics.

In the dedication of the _Sommario della Storia d' Italia_ to Francesco
Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he
retired in 1527. I do not purpose to extract portions of the historical
narrative contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be to
transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it written; but
rather to quote the passages which throw a light upon the opinions of
Machiavelli and Guicciardini, or confirm the