enough.  The fault of his Caesar is that he makes a wrong start.  Points of resemblance between the first century before the Christian era and the nineteenth century after it may of course be found.  But the differences are essential and fundamental.  A society which rests upon servitude cannot be like a society which rests upon freedom.  Christianity has modified the whole lives of those who do not profess it, and has created a totally new atmosphere, even if it be not in all respects a better one.  Representative government, whether it be a good thing or a bad thing, is at least a thing which counts.  Caesar could hardly have understood the idea of an indissoluble marriage, of a limited monarchy, of equality before the law.

One strange similitude Froude did, in deference to outraged susceptibilities, omit, and only the first edition contains a formal comparison of Julius Caesar with Jesus Christ.  No irreverence was intended.  It was Froude’s enthusiasm for Caesar that carried him away.  Still, the instance is only an extreme form of what comes from pushing parallels below the surface.  It is only a shade less misleading, though many shades less startling, to represent Caesar as a virtuous philanthropist abstemious habits who perished in a magnanimous effort to rescue the people from the tyranny of nobles.  The people in the modern sense were slaves, and the Republic at least ensured that there should be some protection against military despotism, to which in due course its abolition led.  That Caesar was intellectually among the greatest men of all time is beyond question.  Both strategist and as historian he is supreme.  His “thrasonical boast” was sober truth, and he stands above military or literary criticism, a lesson and a model.  But he was steeped in all the vices of his age, and his motive was personal ambition.  The Republic did not give him sufficient scope, and therefore he would have destroyed it, if he had not been himself destroyed.

Froude adopted the position of a great German professor and historian, Theodor Mommsen, whose prejudices were as strong as his learning was profound.  He went with Mommsen in adoration of Caesar, and in depreciation of Cicero.  That Cicero used one sort of language in public speeches, and another sort in private correspondence, is true, and is notorious because some of his most intimate letters have been preserved.  But it is not peculiar to him.  The man who talked in public as he talked in private would have small sense of fitness.  The man who talked in private as he talked in public would have small sense of humour.  Although Cicero’s humour was not brilliant, he had sufficient taste to preserve him from pedantry and from solecisms.  His devotion to the Republic was perfectly sincere; and if he changed in his behaviour to Caesar, it was because Caesar changed in his behaviour to the Republic.  Froude’s specific charge of rapid tergiversation is disproved by dates.  The speech for Marcellus, with its over-strained flattery