theory and in practice; the Dialogue on the Government of Florence, avowing this ostensible partisan of the Medici's secret preference for a republic, though an oligarchical one; most important of all, the Ricordi politici e civili, maxims and memoranda of a statesman. These are purely aphoristic, without system or unity beyond that which they necessarily derive from the constitution of the mind upon which they have been impressed by experience and reflection.
"He fully understood," says Villari, "that by this plan his counsels and political maxims became nothing more than simple observations, palliatives and tricks for the wiser or less wise guidance of the social machine, apart from all radical reform or the creation of any new system of political science or moral philosophy, and still less of any new state or new people. But he neither hoped nor desired to entertain hopes of so lofty a nature. System he did not seek, daring hypotheses were not to his taste; he merely gathered the fruit of his own and others' daily experience." In a word, Guicciardini was a realist; Machiavelli, for all his worldly wisdom, an idealist. As the Bishop of London has remarked: "It is the weakness of Machiavelli's political method that, while professing to deal with politics in a practical spirit, he is not practical enough." It would seem Guicciardini's chief fault to have taken too limited a view of human affairs, and to have judged too exclusively from what was happening in his own corner. The imperfection of historical materials, however, rendered any attempt at a philosophy of history extremely difficult, and Guicciardini's time was too much occupied by administrative labours for profound investigation. Notwithstanding his opportunism and political
