is home more
comfortably; but ladies, no doubt, have had the capacity to make
themselves disagreeable in all ages.

I doubt whether we have any testimony whatever as to Cicero's provincial
government, except that which comes from himself and which is confined
to the letters written by him at the time.[70] Nevertheless, we have a
clear record of his doings, so full and satisfactory are the letters
which he then wrote. The truth of his account of himself has never been
questioned. He draws a picture of his own integrity, his own humanity,
and his own power of administration which is the more astonishing,
because we cannot but compare it with the pictures which we have from
the same hand of the rapacity, the cruelty, and the tyranny of other
governors. We have gone on learning from his speeches and his letters
that these were habitual plunderers, tyrants, and malefactors, till we
are taught to acknowledge that, in the low condition to which Roman
nature had fallen, it was useless to expect any other conduct from a
Roman governor; and then he gives us the account of how a man did
govern, when, as by a miracle, a governor had been found honest,
clear-headed, sympathetic, and benevolent. That man was himself; and he
gives this account of himself, as it were, without a blush! He tells the
story of himself, not as though it was remarkable! That other governors
should grind the bones of their subjects to make bread of them, and draw
the blood from their veins for drink; but that Cicero should not
condescend to take even the normal tribute when willingly offered, seems
to Cicero to have been only what the world had a right to expect from
him! A wonderful testimony is this as to the man's character; but surely
the universal belief in his own account of his own governorship is more
wonderful. "The conduct of Cicero in his command was meritorious," says
De Quincey. "His short career as Proconsul in Cilicia had procured for
him well-merited honor," says Dean Merivale.[71] "He had managed his
province well; no one ever suspected Cicero of being corrupt or unjust,"
says Mr. Froude, who had, however, said (some pages before) that Cicero
was "thinking as usual of himself first, and his duty afterward."[72]
Dio Cassius, who is never tired of telling disagreeable stories of
Cicero's life, says not a word of his Cilician government, from which we
may, at any rate, argue that no stories detrimental to Cicero as a
Proconsul had come in the wa