In his accumulated sorrows Cicero now plunged for relief into literary labors.  It was thus that his private sorrows were the means which Providence employed to transmit his precious thoughts and experiences to future ages, as the most valued inheritance he could bestow on posterity.  What a precious legacy to the mind of the world was the book of “Ecclesiastes,” yet by what bitter experiences was its wisdom earned!

It was in the short period when Caesar rejoiced in the mighty power which he transmitted to the Roman Emperors that Cicero wrote, in comparative retirement, his history of “Roman Eloquence,” his inquiry as to the “Greatest Good and Evil,” his “Cato,” his “Orator,” his “Nature of the Gods,” and his treatises on “Glory,” on “Fate,” on “Friendship,” on “Old Age,” and his grandest work of all, the “Offices.”—­the best manual in ethics which has come down to us from heathen antiquity.  In his studious retirement he reminds us of Bacon after his fall, when on his estate, surrounded with friends, and in the enjoyment of elegant leisure, he penned the most valued of his immortal compositions.  And in those degenerate days at Rome, when liberty was crushed under foot forever, it is beautiful to see the greatest of Roman statesmen and lawyers consoling himself and instructing posterity by his exhaustive treatises on the fundamental principles of law, of morality, and of philosophy.

The assassination of Caesar by Roman senators, which Cicero seems to have foreseen, and in which he rejoiced, at this time shocked and disturbed the world.  For nearly two thousand years the verdict of the civilized world respecting this great conqueror has been unanimous.  But Mr. Froude has attempted to reverse this verdict, as he has in reference to Henry VIII., and as Carlyle—­another idolater of force—­has attempted in the cases of Oliver Cromwell and Frederick II.  This remarkable word-painter, in his Life of Caesar,—­which is, however, interesting from first to last, as everything he writes is interesting,—­has presented him as an object of unbounded admiration, as I have already noticed in my lecture on Caesar.  Whether in his eagerness to say something new, or from an ill-concealed hostility to aristocratic and religious institutions, or from an admiration of imperialism, or disdain of the people in their efforts at self-government, this able special pleader seems to hail the Roman conqueror as a benefactor to the cause of civilization.  But imperialism crushed all alike,—­the people, no longer able to send their best men to the Senate through the higher offices perchance to represent their interests, and the nobles, shorn of the administration of the Empire.  Soldiers, not civilians, henceforth were to rule the world,—­a dreary thought to a great lawyer like Cicero, or a landed proprietor like Brutus.  Even if such a terrible revolution as occurred in Rome under Caesar may have been ordered wisely by a Superintending Power for those degenerate times, and as a preservation of the peace of the world, that Christianity might take root and spread in countries where all religions were dead,—­still, the prostration of what was dearest to the hearts of all true citizens by the sword was a crime; and men are not to be commended for crime, even if those crimes may be palliated.  “It must need be that offences come, but woe to those by whom they come.”