certitudes which consciousness reveals, as well as in the facts which experience and history demonstrate.  With these he consoled himself in trouble; on these he reposed in the hour of danger.  Like Pascal he meditated on the highest truths which task the intellect of man, but, unlike him, did not disdain those weapons which reason forged, and which no one used more triumphantly than Pascal himself.  And these great meditations he transmitted for all ages to ponder, as among the most precious of the legacies of antiquity.

Thus did he live, a shining light in a corrupt and godless age, in spite of all the faults which modern critics have enlarged upon in their ambitious desire for novelties, or in their thoughtless or malignant desire? to show up human frailties.  He was a patriot, taking the side of his country’s highest interests; a statesman, seeking to conserve the wisdom of his ancestors; an orator, exposing vices and defending the innocent; a philosopher, unfolding the wisdom of the Greeks; a moralist, laying down the principles of immutable justice; a sage, pondering the mysteries of life; ever active, studious, dignified; the charm and fascination of cultivated circles; as courteous and polished as the ornaments of modern society; revered by friends, feared by enemies, adored by all good people; a kind father, an indulgent husband, a generous friend; hospitable, witty, magnificent,—­a most accomplished gentleman, one of the best men of all antiquity.  What if he was vain and egotistical and vacillating, and occasionally weak?  Can you expect perfection in him who “is born of a woman”?  We palliate the backslidings of Christians; we excuse the crimes of a Constantine, a Theodosius, a Cromwell:  shall we have no toleration for the frailties of a Pagan, in one of the worst periods of history?  I have no patience with those critics who would hurl him from the pedestal on which he has stood for two thousand years.  Contrast him with other illustrious men.  How few Romans or Greeks were better than he!  How few have rendered such exalted services!  And even if he has not perpetuated a faultless character, he has yet bequeathed a noble example; and, more, has transmitted a legacy in the richness of which we forget the faults of the testator,—­a legacy of imperishable thought, clothed in the language of imperishable art,—­a legacy so valuable that it is the treasured inheritance of all civilized nations, and one which no nation can afford to lose.

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AUTHORITIES.

Plutarch’s Life of Cicero, Appian, Dion Cassius, Villeius Paterculus, are the original authorities,—­next to the writings of Cicero himself, especially his Letters and Orations.  Middleton’s Life is full, but one-sided.  Forsyth takes the opposite side in his Life.  The last work in English is that of Anthony Trollope.  In Smith’s Biographical Dictionary is an able article.  Dr. Vaughan has written an interesting lecture.  Merivale has elaborately treated this great man in his valuable History of the Romans.  Colley Cibber’s Character and Conduct of Cicero, Drumann’s Roman History, Rollin’s Ancient History, Biographic Universelle.  Mr. Froude alludes to Cicero in his Life of Caesar, taking nearly the same view as Forsyth.