imprisoned Giannone wrote a
vindication of the rights of the King of Sardinia, against the claims of
the court of Rome. This powerful appeal to the feelings of this
sovereign was at first favourably received; but, under the secret
influence of Rome, the Sardinian monarch, on the extraordinary plea that
he kept Giannone as a prisoner of state that he might preserve him from
the papal power, ordered that the vindicator of his rights should be
more closely confined than before; and, for this purpose, transferred
his state-prisoner to the citadel of Turin, where, after twelve years of
persecution and of agitation, our great historian closed his life!

Such was the fate of this historical martyr, whose work the catholic
Haym describes as _opera scritta con molto fuoco e troppa liberta_. He
hints that this history is only paralleled by De Thou's great work. This
Italian history will ever be ranked among the most philosophical. But,
profound as was the masculine genius of Giannone, such was his love of
fame, that he wanted the intrepidity requisite to deny himself the
delight of giving his history to the world, though some of his great
predecessors had set him a noble and dignified example.

One more observation on these Italian historians. All of them represent
man in his darkest colours; their drama is terrific; the actors are
monsters of perfidy, of inhumanity, and inventors of crimes which seem
to want a name! They were all "princes of darkness;" and the age seemed
to afford a triumph of Manicheism! The worst passions were called into
play by all parties. But if something is to be ascribed to the manners
of the times, much more may be traced to that science of politics, which
sought for mastery in an undefinable struggle of ungovernable political
power; in the remorseless ambition of the despots, and the hatreds and
jealousies of the republics. These Italian historians have formed a
perpetual satire on the contemptible simulation and dissimulation, and
the inexpiable crimes of that system of politics, which has derived a
name from one of themselves--the great, may we add, the calumniated,
MACHIAVEL?

FOOTNOTES:

[112] They were printed at Basle in 1569--at London in 1595--in
Amsterdam, 1663. How many attempts to echo the voice of suppressed
truth--_Haym's Bib. Ital._ 1803.

[113] My friend, Mr. Merivale, whose critical research is only
equalled by the elegance of his taste, has supplied me with a no