First, Machiavelli, by Titian.--Precisely as I should imagine him. A face of great acuteness and prudence, and of suffering,--as if lamenting over the profoundly-studied worthless side of human nature; that hound-like character which loves where it is spurned, follows where it fears, and is faithful where it is fed. A trace of compassionate scorn plays round the thin lips, while the dark eye appears turned reflectingly inward. It appears strange, at first sight, that this great and classic writer should so long have been misunderstood in the grossest manner. Either he has been represented as a moral scarecrow (and how miserable is Voltaire's refutation of that notion!); or the most fantastic hypothesis is put forth, that his book is a satire. On more attentive observation, we arrive at the conviction that it was reserved for modern times, in which politics at length begin to be viewed and understood from a higher and really humane point of view, to form a correct judgment of Machiavel's Prince. To all arbitrary princes--and under that name I class all those who think themselves invested with power solely 'par la grace de Dieu' and for their own advantage,--all conquerors, and children of fortune, whom some chance has given to the people they regard as their property,--to all such as these, this profound and acute writer shows the true and only way to prosper; the exhaustive system they must of necessity follow, in order to maintain a power radically sprung from the soil of sin and error. His book is, and must ever be, the true, inimitable gospel of such rulers; and we Prussians, especially, have reason to congratulate ourselves that Napoleon had learned his Machiavel so ill;--we should otherwise probably be still groaning under his yoke. That Machiavel felt all the value and the power of freedom, is plain, from many passages in his book. In one he says, "He who has conquered a _free_ city, has no secure means of keeping it, but either to destroy it, or to people it with new inhabitants; _for no benefit a sovereign can confer will ever make it forget its lost freedom_." By proving, as he incontestably does, that such a degree of arbitrary power can be maintained only by the utter disregard of all morality, and by seriously inculcating this doctrine upon princes, he also demonstrates but too plainly, that the whole frame of society, in his time, contained within itself a principle of demoralization; and that no true happiness, no true civilization, was possible to any people till that principle was detected and destroyed. The events of modern times, and their consequences, have at length opened their eyes to this truth, and they will not close them again!