d instructing posterity by his exhaustive
treatises on the fundamental principles of law, of morality, and of
philosophy.

The assassination of Caesar by Roman senators, which Cicero seems to
have foreseen, and in which he rejoiced, at this time shocked and
disturbed the world. For nearly two thousand years the verdict of the
civilized world respecting this great conqueror has been unanimous. But
Mr. Froude has attempted to reverse this verdict, as he has in reference
to Henry VIII., and as Carlyle--another idolater of force--has attempted
in the cases of Oliver Cromwell and Frederick II. This remarkable
word-painter, in his Life of Caesar,--which is, however, interesting
from first to last, as everything he writes is interesting,--has
presented him as an object of unbounded admiration, as I have already
noticed in my lecture on Caesar. Whether in his eagerness to say
something new, or from an ill-concealed hostility to aristocratic and
religious institutions, or from an admiration of imperialism, or disdain
of the people in their efforts at self-government, this able special
pleader seems to hail the Roman conqueror as a benefactor to the cause
of civilization. But imperialism crushed all alike,--the people, no
longer able to send their best men to the Senate through the higher
offices perchance to represent their interests, and the nobles, shorn of
the administration of the Empire. Soldiers, not civilians, henceforth
were to rule the world,--a dreary thought to a great lawyer like Cicero,
or a landed proprietor like Brutus. Even if such a terrible revolution
as occurred in Rome under Caesar may have been ordered wisely by a
Superintending Power for those degenerate times, and as a preservation
of the peace of the world, that Christianity might take root and spread
in countries where all religions were dead,--still, the prostration of
what was dearest to the hearts of all true citizens by the sword was a
crime; and men are not to be commended for crime, even if those crimes
may be palliated. "It must need be that offences come, but woe to those
by whom they come."

Cicero was now sixty-three, prematurely old, discouraged, and
heart-broken. And yet he braced himself up for one more grand
effort,--for a life and death struggle with Antony, one of the ablest
of Caesar's generals; a demagogue, eloquent and popular, but
outrageously cruel and unscrupulous, and with unbridled passions. Had it
not been for his infatuated lo