Patriotism cannot be denied to Machiavelli’s great counterpart, Francesco Guicciardini, and if it seems colder and more stained by unworthy subserviency and political cynicism, it must be remembered that these defects are the defects of the qualities in which Guicciardini surpassed his rival. Machiavelli was a genius of the creative order, and hence, with all his astuteness, occasionally somewhat Utopian; his life was free, and his muse licentious. Guicciardini had a great practical genius, infallible within a narrow sphere. He does not invent or generalise; his wisdom comes mainly by experience, and he accepts things for what they are. “His originality,” says Signor Villari, “though doubtless considerable, was devoted to giving an exact and most lucid shape to the current doctrines of his day.” “A sound judgment,” he himself says in his _Ricordi_, “is better than a pregnant wit.” He is correct in all the relations of life, and has not the least turn for writing comedies. Machiavelli, after all his experiences, still hopes like an enchanted maiden for the ideal prince. Guicciardini knows that there is none such, and that, even if there were, the barbarians would be too strong for him. He coldly accepts the situation and hires himself out to a bad Government, with this redeeming quality, that it is still a Government of Italians by Italians. It may be said that Machiavelli was willing to enter the service of the Medici, and such is the fact; but Florence had owed glorious days to Cosmo and Lorenzo, and Machiavelli could never have thought or written of them as Guicciardini did of his Papal employers: “_No one can have a stronger detestation than mine for the avarice, ambition, and sloth of the priesthood. Nevertheless, the position I have always held with several pontiffs has compelled me to love them for mine own advantage; and but for this consideration I should have loved Martin Luther as myself, not for the purpose of freeing myself from the laws introduced by the Christian religion, as it is generally interpreted and understood, but in order to see this herd of wretches reduced to their proper condition, namely, that of their being left either without vices or without authority._”