f their
empire, the cementing of their alliances, the society of learned men,
the friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, the
building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of
conquest. Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively
innocent taste for magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a
scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo de' Medici and Frederick of Urbino,
exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of
culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic
houses. The strain of tyranny proved too strong. Crime, illegality, and
the sense of peril, descending from father to son, produced monsters in
the shape of men. The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last
Sforzas, the last Malatestas, the last Farnesi, the last Medici are
among the worst specimens of human nature.

Macaulay's brilliant description of the Italian tyrant in his essay on
Machiavelli deserves careful study. It may, however, be remarked that
the picture is too favorable. Macaulay omits the darker crimes of the
despots, and draws his portrait almost exclusively from such men as Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, Frederick of Urbino,
and Lorenzo de' Medici. The point he is seeking to establish--that
political immorality in Italy was the national correlative to Northern
brutality--leads him to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined
passions, the firm and astute policy, the power over men, and the
excellent government which distinguished the noblest Italian princes.
When he says 'Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the contrary,
where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and
humane'; he seems to have forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci,
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia. When he writes, 'His
passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their
most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been
accustomed,' he leaves Francesco Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria
Sforza, Pier Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning. If all
the despots had been what Macaulay describes, the revolutions and
conspiracies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have
taken place. It is, however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth
century the conduct of the tyrant toward his sub