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The life and times of Niccolò Machiavelli (1892)
The life and times of Niccol Machiavelli - 1892 Author:Pasquale Villari Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and disappearing to make way for new. The Scholastic method yielded the place to philosophy, the principle of authority fell before the advance of free reason an... more »d free examination. Then the study of natural science began ; Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo"'-da Vinci hazarded the first steps in search of the experimental Intethod ; commerce and industry advanced ; voyages were multiplied, and Christopher Columbus discovered America. The art of printing, invented in Germany, quickly became an Italian trade. Classical learning was everywhere diffused, and'the'use of the Latin tongue,—now more than ever the universal language of civilized people—placed Italy in close relation with .the rest of Europe, as its accepted adviser and mistress of Jearping. Political science and the art of war were created ; chronicles gave way to the political histories of Guicciardini .n(l Machiavelli ; ancient culture sprang into new life, and amid rnany other new forms of literary composition the romance of chivalry came into existence. Brunelleschi created a new architecture, Donatello restored sculpture, Masaccio and a myriad of Tuscan and Umbrian painters prepared the way, by the study of nature, for Raphael and Michel Angelo. The world seemed renewed and rejuvenated by the splendid sun of Italian culture. But, in the midst of this vivid splendour, strange and inexplicable contradictions were to be found. This rich, industrious, intelligent people, before whom all Europe stood, as it were, in an ecstasy of admiration -fc- this people was rapidly becoming corrupt. Everywhere liberty was disappearing, tyrants were springing up, family ties seemed -to be slackened, the domestic hearth was profaned : no man longer trusted to the good faith of Italians. Both politically and morally the nation had b...« less