To unravel plots and weave counterplots; to meet treachery with fraud; to parry force with sleights of hand; to credit human nature with the basest motives, while the blackest crimes were contemplated with cold enthusiasm for their cleverness, was reckoned then the height of political sagacity. Guicciardini could play the game to perfection. In 1515 Leo X. took him into service, and made him governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule, and in 1523 he was appointed viceregent of Romagna by Clement VII. These high offices rendered Guicciardini the virtual master of the papal states beyond the Apennines, during a period of great bewilderment and difficulty. The copious correspondence relating to his administration has recently been published (_Op. ined._ vols. vii., viii.). In 1526 Clement gave him still higher rank as lieutenant-general of the papal army. While holding this commission, he had the humiliation of witnessing from a distance the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement, without being able to rouse the perfidious duke of Urbino into activity. The blame of Clement's downfall did not rest with him; for it was merely his duty to attend the camp, and keep his master informed of the proceedings of the generals (see the Correspondence, _Op. ined._ vols. iv., v.). Yet Guicciardini's conscience accused him, for he had previously counselled the pope to declare war, as he notes in a curious letter to himself written in 1527 (_Op. ined._, x. 104). Clement did not, however, withdraw his confidence, and in 1531 Guicciardini was advanced to the governorship of Bologna, the most important of all the papallord-lieutenancies (Correspondence, _Op. ined._ vol. ix.). This post he resigned in 1534 on the election of Paul III., preferring to follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes. It may here be noticed that though Guicciardini served three popes through a period of twenty years, or perhaps because of this, he hated the papacy with a deep and frozen bitterness, attributing the woes of Italy to the ambition of the church, and declaring he had seen enough of sacerdotal abominations to make him a Lutheran (see _Op. ined._ i. 27, 104, 96, and _Ist. d' It._, ed. Ros., ii. 218). The same discord between his private opinions and his public actions may be traced in his conduct subsequent to 1534. As a political theorist, Guicciardini believed that the best form of government was a commonwealth administered upon the type of the Venetian constitution (_Op. ined._ i. 6; ii. 130 sq.); and we have ample evidence to prove that he had judged the tyranny of the Medici at its true worth (_Op. ined._ i. 171, on the tyrant; the whole _Storia Fiorentina_ and _Reggimento di Firenze_, ib. i. and iii., on the Medici). Yet he did not hesitate to place his powers at the disposal of the most vicious members of that house for the enslavement of Florence. In 1527 he had been declared a rebel by the Signoria on account of his well-known Medicean