should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the
hands of the better class--the "optimates," as he called them--as would
preserve the city from democracy and revolution. No man ever trusted
more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero, or was more anxious for
aristocratic authority. But neither in one direction nor the other did
he look for personal aggrandizement, beyond that which might come to him
in accordance with the law and in subjection to the old form of
government.

It is because he was in truth patriotic, because his dreams of a
Republic were noble dreams, because he was intent on doing good in
public affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of Rome and of
Romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the State" that
his memory is still worth recording. Added to this was the intellect and
the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any rate supreme. And
then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by
the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly
successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the
romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy. As we are
moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are
we stirred by the efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this
man. There is a picturesqueness about the life of Cicero which is
wanting in the stories of Marius or Sylla, of Pompey, or even of
Caesar--a picturesqueness which is produced in great part by these very
doubtings which have been counted against him as insincerity.

His hands were clean when the hands of all around him were defiled by
greed. How infinitely Cicero must have risen above his time when he
could have clean hands! A man in our days will keep himself clean from
leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him.
Advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad, and public
opinion coerces us. There is something too, we must suppose, in the
lessons of Christianity. Or it may be that the man of our day, with all
these advantages, does not keep himself clean--that so many go astray
that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance. Even
with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do
it. With the Romans, in the time of Cicero, greed, feeding itself on
usury, rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of
life that its indulgence enta