itions!" Then he tells us the
subjects selected. Rape, incest, and other horrors are subjected to the
lads for their declamation, in order that they may learn to be orators.

Messala then explains that in those latter days--his days, that
is--under the rule of despotic princes, truly large subjects are not
allowed to be discussed in public--confessing, however, that those large
subjects, though they afford fine opportunities to orators, are not
beneficial to the State at large. But it was thus, he says, that Cicero
became what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he defended
only P. Quintius and Archias, and had had nothing to do with Catiline,
or Milo, or Verres, or Antony--showing, by-the-way, how great was the
reputation of that speech, Pro Milone, with which we shall have to deal
farther on.

The treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having
probably been lost. From whose mouth the last words are supposed to
come is not apparent. It ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial
government--suitable, indeed, to the time of Domitian, but very unlike
Tacitus. While, however, it praises despotism, it declares that only by
the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence be maintained.
"Our country, indeed, while it was astray in its government; while it
tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and discord; while there
was no peace in the Forum, no agreement in the Senate, no moderation on
the judgment-seat, no reverence for letters, no control among the
magistrates, boasted, no doubt, a stronger eloquence."

From what we are thus told of Cicero, not what we hear from himself, we
are able to form an idea of the nature of his education. With his mind
fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something noble with
himself, he gave himself up to all kinds of learning. It was Macaulay, I
think, who said of him that the idea of conquering the "omne
scibile,"--the understanding of all things within the reach of human
intellect--was before his eyes as it was before those of Bacon. The
special preparation which was, in Cicero's time, employed for students
at the bar is also described in the treatise from which I have
quoted--the preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite
of that afforded by the "rhetores." "Among ourselves, the youth who was
intended to achieve eloquence in the Forum, when already trained at home
and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought by his fa