We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes with nature.
The transcendent merit of the history is this--that it presents us with a scientific picture of politics and of society during the first half of the sixteenth century.

The picture is set forth with a clairvoyance and a candor that are almost terrible.

The author never feels enthusiasm for a moment: no character, however great for good or evil, rouses him from the attitude of tranquil disillusioned criticism.

He utters but few exclamations of horror or of applause.

Faith, religion, conscience, self-subordination to the public good, have no place in his list of human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, envy, are the forces which, according to his experience, move the world.