deep and passionate interest he took in the political vicissitudes
through which Italy was then passing, and in all of which the singleness
of purpose with which he continued to advance his native Florence, is
clearly manifested. It was during his retirement upon his little estate
at San Casciano that Machiavelli wrote _The Prince_, the most famous of
all his writings, and here also he had begun a much more extensive work,
his _Discourses on the Decades of Livy_, which continued to occupy him
for several years. These _Discourses_, which do not form a continuous
commentary on Livy, give Machiavelli an opportunity to express his own
views on the government of the state, a task for which his long and
varied political experience, and an assiduous study of the ancients
rendered him eminently qualified. The _Discourses_ and _The Prince_,
written at the same time, supplement each other and are really one work.
Indeed, the treatise, _The Art of War_, though not written till 1520
should be mentioned here because of its intimate connection with these
two treatises, it being, in fact, a further development of some of
the thoughts expressed in the _Discorsi_. _The Prince_, a short work,
divided into twenty-six books, is the best known of all Machiavelli's
writings. Herein he expresses in his own masterly way his views on the
founding of a new state, taking for his type and model Cæsar Borgia,
although the latter had failed in his schemes for the consolidation of
his power in the Romagna. The principles here laid down were the natural
outgrowth of the confused political conditions of his time. And as in
the _Principe_, as its name indicates, Machiavelli is concerned chiefly
with the government of a Prince, so the _Discorsi_ treat principally
of the Republic, and here Machiavelli's model republic was the Roman
commonwealth, the most successful and most enduring example of popular
government. Free Rome is the embodiment of his political idea of the
state. Much that Machiavelli says in this treatise is as true to-day and
holds as good as the day it was written. And to us there is much that