rst step to the last they owed to the sublime
magnanimity of their victim--well knowing his own continual danger, but
refusing to evade it by any arts of tyranny or distrust--when they had
gone through their little scenic mummery of swaggering with their
daggers--cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'--they had
come to the end of the play. _Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite_. Not a step
further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they
began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' We believe that no act
so thoroughly womanish, that is, moving under a blind impulse without a
thought of consequences, without a concerted succession of steps, and no
_arriere pensee_ as to its final improvement, ever yet had a place or
rating in the books of Conspiracy, far less was attended (as by accident
this was) with an equipage of earth-shattering changes. Even the poor
deluded followers of the Old Mountain Assassin, though drugged with
bewildering potions, such men as Sir Walter Scott describes in the
person of that little wily fanatic gambolling before the tent of Richard
_Coeur-de-lion_, had always settled which way they would run when the
work was finished. And how peculiarly this reach of foresight was
required for these anti-Julian conspirators--will appear from one fact.
Is the reader aware, were these boyish men aware, that--besides, what we
all know from Shakespeare, a mob won to Caesar's side by his very last
codicils of his will; besides a crowd of public magistrates and
dependents charged upon the provinces, etc., for two years deep by
Caesar's act, though in requital of no services or attachment to himself;
besides a distinct Caesarian party; finally, besides Antony, the express
representative and assignee of Caesar, armed at this moment with the
powers of Consul--there was over and above a great military officer of
Caesar's (Lentulus), then by accident in Rome, holding a most potent
government through the mere favour of Caesar, and pledged therefore by an
instant interest of self-promotion, backed by a large number of Julian
troops at that instant billeted on a suburb of Rome--veterans, and
fierce fellows that would have cut their own fathers' throats 'as soon
as say dumpling' (see Lucan's account of them in Caesar's harangue before
Pharsalia)? Every man of sense would have predicted ruin to the
conspirators. '_You'll tickle it for your concupy_' (Thersites in 'Troil
and Cress.') would have b