translated by Leonardo Bruni (1492). And to-day the young ears and eyes
of Florence were alert for an impulse to action. They saw glimpses, in
reopened fields of history, of quarries long grown over where the ore of
positive politics lay hid. The men who came to-day to the Orti
Oricellarii were men versed in public affairs, men of letters,
historians, poets, living greatly in a great age, with Raphael, Michael
Angelo, Ariosto, Leonardo going up and down amongst them. Machiavelli
was now in fair favour with the Medici, and is described by Strozzi as
_una persona per sorgere_ (a rising man). He was welcomed into the group
with enthusiasm, and there read and discussed the _Discorsi_. Nominally
mere considerations upon the First Decade of Livy, they rapidly
encircled all that was known and thought of policy and state-craft, old
and living.

[Sidenote: Their Plan.]

Written concurrently with _The Prince_, though completed later, the
_Discorsi_ contain almost the whole of the thoughts and intents of the
more famous book, but with a slightly different application. '_The
Prince_ traces the progress of an ambitious man, the _Discorsi_ the
progress of an ambitious people,' is an apt if inadequate criticism.
Machiavelli was not the first Italian who thought and wrote upon the
problems of his time. But he was the first who discussed grave questions
in modern language. He was the first modern political writer who wrote
of men and not of man, for the Prince himself is a collective
individuality.

'This must be regarded as a general rule,' is ever in Machiavelli's
mouth, while Guicciardini finds no value in a general rule, but only in
'long experience and worthy discretion.' The one treated of policy, the