All considerations of religion and morality were subordinated by him with strict impartiality to policy: and his policy he restrained to two objects--the advancement of his family, and the consolidation of the temporal power.

These were narrow aims for the ambition of a potentate who with one stroke of his pen pretended to confer the new-found world on Spain.

Yet they taxed his whole strength, and drove him to the perpetration of enormous crimes.
[1] It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in a note: 'These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices; private habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of truth, no fidelity to his engagements, no religious sentiment; insatiable avarice, unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the cruelty of barbarous races, burning desire to elevate his sons by any means: of these there were many, and among them--in order that he might not lack vicious instruments for effecting his vicious schemes--one not less detestable in any way than his father.' _St.d'It._ vol.i.p.

9.

I shall translate and put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander from the _Storia di Firenze_.
[2] In the sentences which close the 11th chapter of the _Prince_.
[3] Mach.