The movements of the eagle and the lion must be unintelligible to the spider or the fox.

It was impossible for Guicciardini to feel the real greatness of the century, or to foresee the new forces to which it was giving birth.

He could not divine the momentous issues of the Lutheran schism; and though he perceived the immediate effect upon Italian politics of the invasion of the French, he failed to comprehend the revolution marked out for the future in the shock of the modern nations.

While criticising the papacy, he discerned the pernicious results of nepotism and secular ambition: but he had no instinct for the necessity of a spiritual and religious regeneration.
His judgment of the political situation led him to believe that the several units of the Italian system might be turned to profit and account by the application of superficial remedies,--by the development of despotism, for example, or of oligarchy, when in reality the decay of the nation was already past all cure.
Two other masterpieces from Guicciardini's pen, the _Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze_ and the _Storia Fiorentina_, have been given to the world during the last twenty years.

To have published them immediately after their author's death would have been inexpedient, since they are far too candid and outspoken to have been acceptable to the Medicean dynasty.