colossal
shadow as of predestination over the most trivial incidents of his
career. On the morning of Pharsalia, every man who reads a record of
that mighty event feels[D] by a secret instinct that an earthquake is
approaching which must determine the final distribution of the ground,
and the relations among the whole family of man through a thousand
generations. Precisely the inverse case is realized in some modern
sections of history, where the feebleness or the inertia of the
presiding intellect communicates a character of triviality to events
that otherwise are of paramount historical importance. In Caesar's case,
simply through the perfection of his preparations arrayed against all
conceivable contingencies, there is an impression left as of some
incarnate Providence, vailed in a human form, ranging through the ranks
of the legions; while, on the contrary, in the modern cases to which we
allude, a mission, seemingly authorized by inspiration, is suddenly
quenched, like a torch falling into water, by the careless character of
the superintending intellect. Neither case is without its appropriate
interest. The spectacle of a vast historical dependency, pre-organized
by an intellect of unusual grandeur, wears the grace of congruity and
reciprocal proportion. And on the other hand, a series of mighty events
contingent upon the motion this way or that of a frivolous hand, or
suspended on the breath of caprice, suggests the wild and fantastic
disproportions of ordinary life, when the mighty masquerade moves on
forever through successions of the gay and the solemn--of the petty and
the majestic.

Caesar's cast of character owed its impressiveness to the combination
which it offered of moral grandeur and monumental immobility, such as we
see in Marius, with the dazzling intellectual versatility found in the
Gracchi, in Sylla, in Catiline, in Antony. The comprehension and the
absolute perfection of his prescience did not escape the eye of Lucan,
who describes him as--"Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum."
A fine lambent gleam of his character escapes also in that magnificent
fraction of a line, where he is described as one incapable of learning
the style and sentiments suited to a private interest--"Indocilis
privata loqui."

There has been a disposition manifested among modern writers to disturb
the traditional characters of Caesar and his chief antagonist.
Audaciously to disparage Caesar, and without a shadow