n at Rome, for the sundering of conjugal relations, and he
communicates no secrets. In his grief and sadness he does, however, a
most foolish thing: he marries a young lady one-third his age. She
accepted him for his name and rank; he sought her for her beauty, her
youth, and her fortune. This union of May with December was of course a
failure. Both parties were soon disenchanted and disappointed. Neither
party found happiness, only discontent and chagrin. The everlasting
incongruities of such a relation--he sixty and she nineteen--soon led to
another divorce. _He_ expected his young wife to mourn with him the loss
of his daughter Tullia. _She_ expected that her society and charms
would be a compensation for all that he had lost; yea, more, enough to
make him the most fortunate and happy of mortals. In truth, he was too
old a man to have married a young woman whatever were the inducements.
It was the great folly of his life; an illustration of the fact that, as
a general thing, the older a man grows the greater fool he becomes, so
far as women are concerned; a folly that disgraced and humiliated the
two wisest and greatest men who ever sat on the Jewish throne.

In his accumulated sorrows Cicero now plunged for relief into literary
labors. It was thus that his private sorrows were the means which
Providence employed to transmit his precious thoughts and experiences to
future ages, as the most valued inheritance he could bestow on
posterity. What a precious legacy to the mind of the world was the book
of "Ecclesiastes," yet by what bitter experiences was its wisdom earned!

It was in the short period when Caesar rejoiced in the mighty power
which he transmitted to the Roman Emperors that Cicero wrote, in
comparative retirement, his history of "Roman Eloquence," his inquiry as
to the "Greatest Good and Evil," his "Cato," his "Orator," his "Nature
of the Gods," and his treatises on "Glory," on "Fate," on "Friendship,"
on "Old Age," and his grandest work of all, the "Offices."--the best
manual in ethics which has come down to us from heathen antiquity. In
his studious retirement he reminds us of Bacon after his fall, when on
his estate, surrounded with friends, and in the enjoyment of elegant
leisure, he penned the most valued of his immortal compositions. And in
those degenerate days at Rome, when liberty was crushed under foot
forever, it is beautiful to see the greatest of Roman statesmen and
lawyers consoling himself an