deemed as audacious as for such a man as Burke to aspire to a seat in the cabinet during the reign of George III.  A lawyer at Rome, like a lawyer in London, might become a lord chancellor or praetor, but not easily a prime minister:  he would be defeated by aristocratic influence and jealousies.  Although the people had the right of election, they voted at the dictation of those who had money and power.  Yet Cicero obtained the consulship, probably with the aid of senators, which he justly regarded as a great triumph.  It was a very unusual thing.  It was more marvellous than for a Jew to reign in Great Britain, or, like Mordecai, in the court of a Persian king.

The most distinguished service of Cicero as consul was to ferret out the conspiracy of Catiline.  Now, this traitor belonged to the very highest rank in a Senate of nobles; he was like an ancient duke in the British House of Peers.  It was no easy thing for a plebeian consul to bring to justice so great a culprit.  He was more formidable than Essex in the reign of Elizabeth, or Bassompierre in the time of Richelieu.  He was a man of profligate life, but of marked ability and boundless ambition.  He had a band of numerous and faithful followers, armed and desperate.  He was also one of those oily and aristocratic demagogues who bewitch the people,—­not, as in our times, by sophistries, but by flatteries.  He was as debauched as Mirabeau, but without his patriotism, though like him he aimed to overturn the Constitution by allying himself with the democracy.  The people, whom he despised, he gained by his money and promises; and he had powerful confederates of his own rank, so that he was on the point of deluging Rome with blood, his aim being nothing less than the extermination of the Senate and the magistrates by assassination, and a general division of the public treasure, with personal assumption of public power.

But all his schemes were foiled by Cicero, who added unwearied activity to extraordinary penetration.  For this great and signal service Cicero received the highest tribute the State could render.  He was called the savior of his country; and he succeeded in staving off for a time the fall of his country’s liberties.  It was a mournful sight to him to see the ascendency which demagogues had already gained, since it betokened the approaching destruction of the Constitution, which, good or bad, was dear to him, and which as an aristocrat he sought to conserve.

Cicero’s evil star was not Catiline, but Clodius,—­another aristocratic demagogue whose crimes he exposed, although he failed to bring him to justice.  Clodius was shielded by his powerful connections; and he was, besides, a popular favorite, as well as a petted scion of one of the greatest families.  Clodius showed his hostility to Cicero, and sought revenge by artfully causing the people to pass or revive a law that whoever had inflicted capital punishment on a citizen without a trial should be banished.  This seemed to the