Marcus Tullius, the celebrated Roman orator, was born in the year of Rome 647, about 105 years before Christ. His father Marcus Tullius, who was of the equestrian order, took great care of his education, which was directed particularly with a view to the bar. Young Tully, at his first appearance in public, declaimed with such vehemence against Sylla's party, that it became expedient for him to retire into Greece; where he heard the Athenian orators and philosophers, and greatly improved both in eloquence and knowledge. Here he met with T. Pomponius, who had been his school-fellow; and who, from his love to Athens, and spending a great part of his days in it, obtained the surname of Atticus; and here they revived and confirmed that noted friendship which subsisted between them through life with so celebrated a constancy and affection. From Athens he passed into Asia; and after an excursion of two years came back again into Italy.

Cicero had now arrived at Rome; and, after one year more spent at the bar, obtained, in the next place, the dignity of quaestor. Among the causes which he pleaded before his quaestorship, was that of the famous comedian Roscius, whom a singular merit in his art had recommended to the familiarity and friendship of the greatest men in Rome. The quaestors were the general receivers or treasurers of the republic, and were sent annually into the provinces distributed to them, as they always were, by lot. The island of Sicily happened to fall to Cicero's share; and that part of it, for it was considerable enough to be divided into two provinces, which was called Lilybeum. This office he received, not as a gift, but a trust; and he acquitted himself so well in it, that he gained the love and admiration of all the Sicilians. Before he left Sicily, he made the tour of the island, to see every thing that was curious, and especially the city of Syracuse; where he discovered the tomb of Archimedes to the magistrates who were showing him the curiosities of the place, but who, to his surprize, knew nothing of any such tomb.

We have no account of the precise time of Cicero's marriage with Terentia; but it is supposed to have been celebrated immediately after his return from his travels to Italy, when he was about 30 years old. He was now disengaged from his quaestorship in Sicily, by which first step, in the legal gradation and ascent of public honours, he gained an immediate right to the senate, and an actual admission into it during life; and settled again in Rome, where he employed himself constantly in defending the persons and properties of its citizens, and was indeed a general patron. Five years were almost elapsed since Cicero's election to the quaestorship, which was the proper interval prescribed by law before he could hold the next office of edile; to which he was now, in his 37th year, elected by the unanimous suffrages of all the tribes, and preferably to all his competitors. After Cicero's election to the edileship, but before his entrance upon the office, he undertook the famed prosecution of C. Verres, the late praetor of Sicily, who was charged with many flagrant acts of injustice, rapine, and cruelty, during his triennial government of that island. This was one of the most memorable transactions of his life, for which he was greatly and justly celebrated by antiquity, and for which he will, in all ages, be admired and esteemed by the friends of mankind. The result was, that, by his diligence and address, he so confounded Hortensius, though the reigning orator at the bar, and usually styled the king of the forum, that he had nothing to say for his client. Verres, despairing of all defence, submitted immediately, without expecting the sentence, to a voluntary exile; where he lived many years, forgotten and deserted by all his friends. He is said to have been relieved in this miserable situation by the generosity of Cicero; yet was proscribed and murdered after all by Mark Antony, for the sake of those fine statues and Corinthian vessels of which he had plundered the Sicilians.

After the usual interval of two years from the time of his being chosen edile, Cicero offered himself a candidate for the praetorship; and, in three different assemblies convened for the choice of praetors, two of which were dissolved without effect, he was declared every time the first praetor by the suffrages of all the centuries. He was now in the career of his fortunes, and in sight, as it were, of the consulship, the grand object of his ambition; and therefore, when his praetorship was at an end, he would not accept any foreign province, the usual reward of that magistracy, and the chief fruit which the generality proposed from it. He had no particular love for money, nor genius for arms; so that those governments had no charms for him: the glory which he pursued was to shine in the eyes of the city as the guardian of its laws, and to teach the magistrates how to execute, and the citizens how to obey, them.

Being now in his 43rd year, the proper age required by law, he declared himself a candidate for the consulship along with six competitors, L. Sulpicius Galba, L. Sergius Catilina, C. Antonius, L. Caecilius Longinus, Q. Cornificius, and C. Licinius Sacerdos. The two first were patricians; the two next plebeians, yet noble; the two last the sons of fathers who had first imported the public honours into their families: Cicero was the only new man, as he was called, among them, or one of the equestrian rank. These were the competitors; and in this competition the practice of bribing was carried on as openly and as shamefully by Antonius and Catiline as it usually is at our elections in Britain. However, as the election approached, Cicero's interest appeared to be superior to that of all the candidates: for the nobles themselves, though always envious and desirous to depress him, yet out of regard to the dangers which threatened the city from many quarters, and seemed ready to burst out into a flame, began to think him the only man qualified to preserve the republic, and break the cabals of the desperate by the vigour and prudence of his administration. The method of choosing consuls was not by an open vote, but by a kind of ballot, or little tickets of wood distributed to the citizens, with the names of the several candidates inscribed upon each; but in Cicero's case the people were not content with this secret and silent way; but before they came to any scrutiny, loudly and universally proclaimed Cicero the first consul, so that, as he himself says, "he was not chosen..." Cicero by the votes of particular citizens, but the common suffrage of the city; nor declared by the voice of the crier, but of the whole Roman people."

Cicero had no sooner entered upon his office than he had occasion to exert himself against P. Servilius Rullus, one of the new tribunes, who had been alarming the senate with the promulgation of an agrarian law; the purpose of which was to create a decemvirate, or ten commissioners, with absolute power for five years over all the revenues of the republic, to distribute them at pleasure to the citizens, &c. These laws used to be greedily received by the populace, and were proposed therefore by factious magistrates as oft as they had any point to carry with the multitude against the public good; so that Cicero's first business was to quiet the apprehensions of the city, and to baffle, if possible, the intrigues of the tribune. Accordingly, in an artful and elegant speech from the rostra, he gave such a turn to the inclination of the people, that they rejected this law with as much eagerness as they had ever received one. But the grand affair of all, which constituted the glory of his consulship, and has transmitted his name with such lustre to posterity, was the skill he showed, and the unwearyed pains he took, in suppressing that horrid conspiracy which was formed by Catiline and his accomplices for the subversion of the commonwealth. For this great service he was honoured with the glorious title of pater patriae, "the father of his country," which he retained for a long time after.

Cicero's administration was now at an end; but he had no sooner quitted his office, than he began to feel the weight of that envy which is the certain fruit of illustrious merit. He was now, therefore, the common mark, not only of all the factious, against whom he had declared perpetual war, but of another party not less dangerous, the envious too, whose united spleen never left him from this moment till they had driven him out of that city which he had so lately preserved. Cicero, upon the expiration of his consulship, took care to lend a particular account of his whole administration to Pompey, who was finishing the Mithridatic war in Asia, in hopes to prevent any wrong impressions there from the calumnies of his enemies, and to draw from him some public declaration in praise of what he had been doing. But Pompey being informed by Metellus and Caesar of the ill humour that was rising against Cicero in Rome, answered him with great coldness, and instead of paying him any compliment, took no notice at all of what had passed in the affair of Catiline, upon which Cicero expostulates with him in a letter which is still extant.

About this time Cicero bought a house of M. Craffus on the Palatine-hill, adjoining to that in which he had always lived with his father, and which he is now supposed to have given up to his brother Quintius. The house cost him near 30,000l. and seems to have been one of the noblest in Rome. It was built about 30 years before by the famous tribune M. Livius Drusus; on which occasion we are told, that when the architect promised to build it for him in such a manner that none of his neighbours should overlook him; "But if you have any skill (replied Drusus), contrive it rather so, that all the world may see what I am doing." The purchase of so expensive a house raised some censure on his vanity; and especially as it was made with borrowed money. This circumstance he himself does not dissemble, but says merrily upon it, that "he was now plunged so deeply in debt, as to be ready for a plot, only that the conspirators would not trust him."

The most remarkable event that happened in this year, which was the 4th of Cicero's life, was the pollution of the mysteries of the bona dea by P. Clodius, which, by an unhappy train of consequences, involved Cicero in a great and unexpected calamity. Clodius had an intrigue with Caesar's wife Pompeia, who, according to annual custom, was now celebrating in her house those awful sacrifices of the goddess, to which no male creature ever was admitted, and where every thing masculine was so scrupulously excluded, that even pictures of that sort were covered during the ceremony. It flattered Clodius's imagination greatly to gain access to his mistress in the midst of her holy ministry; and with this view he dressed himself in a woman's habit, that by the benefit of his smooth face, and the introduction of one of the maids, he might pass without discovery; but by some mistake between him and his guide, he lost his way when he came within the house, and fell unluckily among the other female servants. Here he was detected by his voice, and the servants alarmed the whole company by their shrieks, to the great amazement of the matrons, who threw a veil over their sacred mysteries, while Clodius found means to escape. The story was presently spread abroad, and raised a general scandal and horror throughout the city. The whole defence which Clodius made when, by order of the senate, he was brought to trial, was to prove himself absent at the time of the fact, for which purpose he produced two men to swear that he was then at Interamna, about two or three days journey from the city. But Cicero being called upon to give his testimony, deposed, that Clodius had been with him that very morning at his house in Rome. Irritated by this, Clodius formed a scheme of revenge. This was to get himself chosen tribune, and in that office to drive Cicero out of the city, by the publication of a law, which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude upon the people. But as all patricians were incapable of the tribunate, by its original institution, so his first step was to make himself a plebeian, by the pretence of an adoption into a plebeian house, which could not yet be done without the suffrage of the people. The first triumvirate was now formed, which was nothing else in reality but a traitorous conspiracy of three of the most powerful citizens of Rome, to extort from their country by violence what they could not obtain by law. Pompey's chief motive was to get his acts confirmed by Caesar in his consulship, which was now coming on; Caesar, by giving way to Pompey's glory, to advance his own; and Craffus, to gain that ascendancy by the authority of Pompey and Caesar, which he could not sustain alone. Cicero might have made what terms he pleased with the triumvirate, and been admitted even a partner of their power, and a fourth in their league; but he would not enter into any engagements with the three whose union he and all the friends of the republic abhorred. Clodius, in the mean time, had been pushing... ing on the business of his adoption, which at last he effected, and began soon after to threaten Cicero with all the terrors of his tribunate, to which he was now advanced without any opposition. Both Caesar and Pompey secretly favoured his scheme; not that they intended to ruin Cicero, but only to keep him under the lash; and if they could not draw him into their measures, or make him at least keep quiet, to let Clodius loose upon him. Caesar, in particular, wanted to distress him so far as to force him to a dependence on himself; for which end, while he was privately encouraging Clodius to pursue him, he was proposing expedients to Cicero for his security. But though his fortunes seemed now to be in a tottering condition, and his enemies to gain ground daily upon him, yet he was unwilling to owe the obligation of his safety to any man, far less to Caesar, whose designs he always suspected, and whose schemes he never approved. This stiffness in Cicero so exasperated Caesar, that he resolved immediately to assist Clodius with all his power to oppress him; while Pompey was all the time giving him the strongest assurances that there was no danger, and that he would sooner be killed himself than suffer him to be hurt.

Clodius, in the mean time, was obliging the people with several new laws, contrived chiefly for their advantage; the design of all which was only to introduce, with a better grace, the ground-plot of the plan, the banishment of Cicero. In short, having caused a law to be enacted, importing, that any who had condemned a Roman citizen, unheard, should himself be banished, he soon after impeached Cicero upon it. It was in vain that this great man went up and down the city soliciting his cause in the habit of a suppliant, and attended by many of the first young noblemen whom he had taught the rules of eloquence; those powers of speaking which had so often been successful in defending the cause of others, seemed totally to forsake his own: he was banished by the votes of the people 400 miles from Italy; his houses were ordered to be demolished, and his goods set up to sale. It cannot be denied, that in this great calamity he did not behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a part in the republic, conscious of his integrity, and suffering in the cause of his country; for his letters are generally filled with such lamentable expressions of grief and despair, that his best friends, and even his wife, were forced sometimes to admonish him to rouse his courage, and remember his former character. Atticus was constantly putting him in mind of it; and sent him word of a report that was brought to Rome by one of Cassius's freed-men, that his affliction had disordered his senses. He was now indeed attacked in his weakest part; the only place in which he was vulnerable. To have been as great in affliction as he was in prosperity, would have been a perfection not given to man; yet his very weakness flowed from a source which rendered him the more amiable in all the other parts of his life; and the same tenderness of disposition which made him love his friends, his children, and his country, more passionately than other men, made him feel the loss of them more sensibly. When he had been gone a little more than two months, a motion was made in the senate by one of the tribunes, who was his friend, to recall him, and repeal the laws of Clodius, to which the whole house readily agreed. Many obstructions, as may be easily imagined, were given to it by the Clodian faction; but this made the senate only more resolute to effect it. They passed a vote, therefore, that no other business should be done till Cicero's return was carried; which at last it was, and in so splendid and triumphant a manner, that he had reason, he says, to fear, lest people should imagine that he himself had contrived his late flight for the sake of so glorious a restoration.

Cicero, now in his 50th year, was restored to his former dignity, and soon after to his former fortunes; satisfaction being made to him for the ruin of his estates and houses, which last were again built up by himself with more magnificence than before. But he had domestic grievances about this time which touched him very nearly, and which, as he signifies obscurely to Atticus, were of too delicate a nature to be expressed in a letter: they arose chiefly from the petulant humour of his wife, which began to give him frequent occasions of chagrin, and, by a series of repeated provocations, confirmed in him that settled disgust which at last ended in a divorce.

In the 56th year of his age, he was made proconsul of Cilicia, and his administration there gained him great honour. About this time the expectation of a breach between Caesar and Pompey engaged the general attention. Craufus had been destroyed with his army some years before in the war with the Parthians; and Julia, the daughter of Caesar, whom Pompey married, and who, while she lived, was the cement of their union, was also dead in child-bed. Caesar had put an end to the Gallic war, and reduced the whole province to the Roman yoke; but though his commission was near expiring, he seemed to have no thoughts of giving it up and returning to the condition of a private subject. He pretended that he could not possibly be safe if he parted with his army, especially while Pompey held the province of Spain prolonged to him for five years. This disposition to a breach Cicero soon learned from his friends, as he was returning from his province of Cilicia. But as he foresaw the consequences of a war more clearly and fully than any of them, so his first resolution was to apply all his endeavours and authority to the mediation of a peace; though, in the event of a breach, he was determined within himself to follow Pompey. He clearly foresaw, what he declared without scruple to his friends, that which side forever got the better, the war must necessarily end in a tyranny. The only difference, he said, was, that if their enemies conquered, they should be proscribed; if their friends, they would be slaves.

He no sooner arrived at the city, however, than he fell, as he tells us, into the very flame of civil discord, and found the war in effect proclaimed; for the senate had just voted a decree, that Caesar should disband his army by a certain day, or be declared an enemy; and Caesar's sudden march towards Rome effectually confirmed it. In the midst of all this hurry and confusion, Caesar was extremely solicitous about Cicero; not so much to gain him, for that was not to be expected, as to prevail with him to stand neuter. He wrote to him several times to that effect, and employed employed all their common friends to press him with letters on that subject; all which was done; but in vain, for Cicero was impatient to be gone to Pompey. In the mean time, these letters give us a most sensible proof of the high esteem and credit in which Cicero flourished at this time in Rome; when in a contest for empire, which force alone was to decide, we see the chiefs on both sides so solicitous to gain a man to their party, who had no peculiar skill in arms or talents for war. Pursuing, however, the result of all his deliberations, he embarked at length to follow Pompey, who had been obliged to quit Italy some time before, and was then at Dyrrachium; and arrived safely in his camp with his son, his brother, and his nephew, committing the fortunes of the whole family to the issue of that cause. After the battle of Pharsalia, in which Pompey was defeated, Cicero returned into Italy, and was afterwards received into great favour by Caesar, who was now declared dictator the second time, and Mark Antony his master of horse. We may easily imagine, what we find indeed from his letters, that he was not a little disconcerted at the thoughts of an interview with Caesar, and the indignity of offering himself to a conqueror against whom he had been in arms; for though upon many accounts he had reason to expect a kind reception from Caesar, yet he hardly thought his life, he says, worth begging, since what was given by a matter might always be taken away again at pleasure. But at their meeting he had no occasion to say or do anything that was below his dignity; for Caesar no sooner saw him than he alighted, ran to embrace him, and walked with him alone, conversing very familiarly, for several furlongs.

Cicero was now in his sixty-first year, and forced at last to part with his wife Terentia, whose humour and conduct had been long uneasy to him. She was a woman of an imperious and turbulent spirit, and though he had borne her perseverence in the vigour of health, and flourishing state of his fortunes; yet, in declining life, soured by a continual succession of mortifications from abroad, the want of ease and quiet at home was no longer tolerable to him. But he was immediately oppressed by a new and most cruel affliction, the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, who died in child-bed soon after her divorce from her third husband Dolabella. She was about thirty-two years old at the time of her death; and, by the few hints which are left of her character, appears to have been an excellent and admirable woman. She was most affectionately and piously obedient of her father, and, to the usual graces of her sex, having added the more solid accomplishments of knowledge and polite letters, was qualified to be the companion and delight of his age; and was justly esteemed not only as one of the best, but the most learned of the Roman ladies. His affliction for the death of this daughter was so great, that to shun all company as much as he could, he removed to Atticus's house, where he lived chiefly in his library, turning over every book he could meet with on the subject of moderating grief. But finding his residence here too public, and a greater resort to him than he could bear, he retired to Asturias, one of his seats near Antium; a little island on the Latian shore, at the mouth of a river of the same name, covered with wood and groves cut into shady walks; a scene of all others the fittest to indulge melancholy, and where he could give a free course to his grief. "Here (says he to Atticus) I live without the speech of man; every morning early I hide myself in the thickest of the wood, and never come out till the evening. Next to yourself, nothing is so dear to me as this solitude; and my whole conversation is with my books." Indeed his whole time was employed in little else than reading and writing during Caesar's administration, which he could never cheerfully submit to; and it was within this period that he drew up one of the gravest of those philosophical pieces which are still extant in his works.

Upon the death of Caesar, Octavius his nephew and heir coming into Italy, was presented to Cicero by Hirtius and Panula, with the strongest professions on the part of the young man that he would be governed entirely by his direction. Indeed Cicero thought it necessary to cherish and encourage Octavius, if for nothing else, yet to keep him at a distance from Antony; but could not yet be persuaded to enter heartily into his affairs. He suspected his youth and want of experience; and that he had not strength enough to deal with Antony; and, above all, that he had no good disposition towards the conspirators. He thought it impossible he should ever be a friend to them; and was persuaded rather, that if ever he got the upper hand, his uncle's acts would be more violently enforced, and his death more cruelly revenged, than by Antony himself. And when Cicero did at last consent to unite himself to Octavius's interests, it was with no other view but to arm him with a power sufficient to oppress Antony; yet to checked and limited, that he should not be able to oppress the republic.

In the midst of all this political battle, he was still prosecuting his studies with his usual application; and, besides some philosophical pieces, now finished his book of offices, or the duties of man, for the use of his son: A work admired by all succeeding ages as the most perfect system of Heathen morality, and the noblest effort and specimen of what reason could do in guiding men through life with innocence and happiness. However, he paid a constant attention to public affairs; missed no opportunities, but did every thing that human prudence could do for the recovery of the republic: for all that vigour with which it was making this last effort for itself, was entirely owing to his councils and authority. This appears from those memorable philippics which from time to time he published against Antony, as well as from other monuments of antiquity. But all was in vain; for though Antony's army was entirely defeated at the siege of Modena, which made many people imagine that the war was at an end, and the liberty of Rome established; yet the death of the councils Panula and Hirtius in that action gave the fatal blow to all Cicero's schemes, and was the immediate cause of the ruin of the republic.

Octavius having subdued the senate to his mind, marched towards Gaul to meet Anthony and Lepidus; who had already passed the Alps, and brought their armies into Italy, in order to have a personal interview with him; which had been privately concerted for settling the terms of a triple league, and dividing the power and provinces of Italy among themselves. The place appointed for this interview was a small island about two miles from Bononia, formed by the river Rhenus which runs near that city. Here they met, and spent three days in a close conference to adjust the plan of their accommodation; and the last thing they adjusted was the list of a proscription which they were determined to make of their enemies. This, as the writers tell us, occasioned much difficulty and warm contests among them, till each in his turn consented to sacrifice some of his best friends to the revenge and resentment of his colleagues. Cicero was at his Tuscan villa, when he first received the news of the proscription, and of his being included in it. It was the design of the triumvirate to keep it a secret, if possible, to the moment of execution, in order to surprise those whom they had destined to destruction, before they were aware of their danger, or had time to make their escape. But some of Cicero's friends found means to give him early notice of it; upon which he set forward to the sea-side, with a design to transport himself out of the reach of his enemies. There, finding a vessel ready, he immediately embarked; but the winds being adverse, and the sea uneasy to him, after he had sailed about two leagues along the coast, he was obliged to land, and spend the night on shore. From whence he was forced, by the improvidence of his servants, on board again; but was soon afterwards obliged to land at a country-seat of his a mile from the shore, weary of life, and declaring he was resolved to die in that country which he had so often saved. Here he slept soundly for some time, till his servants once more forced him away in a litter towards the ship, having heard that he was pursued by Antony's assassins. They had scarcely departed when the assassins arrived at his house; and, perceiving him to have fled, pursued him immediately towards the sea, and overtook him in a wood that was near the shore. Their leader was one Popilius Lenas, a tribune of the army, whose life Cicero had formerly defended and saved. As soon as the soldiers appeared, the servants prepared to defend their master's life at the hazard of their own; but Cicero commanded them to set him down and make no resistance. They soon cut off his head and his hands, returning with them to Rome as the most agreeable present to their cruel employer. Antony, who was then at Rome, received them with extreme joy, rewarding the murderer with a large sum of money, and ordered the head to be fixed upon the rostra between the two hands; a sad spectacle to the city, and what drew tears from every eye, to see those mangled members which used to exert themselves so gloriously from that place in defense of the lives, the fortunes, and the liberties of the Roman people, so lamentably exposed to the scorn of sycophants and traitors. The death of the rest, says an historian of that age, caused only a private and particular sorrow; but Cicero's an universal one. It was a triumph over the republic itself; and seemed to confirm and establish the perpetual slavery of Rome.

A modern writer, however, is of opinion, that posterity has been too much seduced by the name of Cicero, and that better citizens were sacrificed to the jealousy of the triumvirs without exciting so much indignation. If we take an impartial survey of Cicero's conduct and principles, avowed in his own epistolary correspondence, and trace him through all the labyrinths of his contradictory letters, we shall find more to blame than to admire; and discover, that the desire of advancing his fortunes, and making himself a name, were, from his outset in life, the only objects he had in view. The good of his country, and the dictates of stern steady virtue, were not, as in Brutus and Cato, the constant springs of his actions. The misfortunes that befell him after his consulship, developed his character, and showed him in his true colours; from that time to his death, pusillanimity, irresolution, and unworthy repining, tainted his judgment, and perplexed every step he wished to take. He flattered Pompey and cringed to Caesar, while in his private letters he abused them both alternately. He acknowledges in a letter to his friend, the time-serving Atticus, that, although he was at present determined to support the cause of Rome and liberty, and to bear misfortune like a philosopher, there was one thing which would gain him over to the triumvirs, and that was their procuring for him the vacant augurship; so pitiful was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honour, his opinion, and the commonwealth. By his wavering imprudent conduct, he contributed greatly towards its destruction. After reproaching the conspirators for leaving him out of the secret, and loading them with the most flattering compliments on their delivering Rome from Caesar's tyranny, he calls Caesar an afflatus, to pay his court to the boy Octavius, by whom he was completely duped. His praises of this triumvir are in the highest strain of panegyric. Mark Antony well knew, that the virulent abuse which Cicero was continually pouring out against him, was not an effusion of patriotic zeal or virtuous indignation, but merely the ebullitions of personal hatred. He therefore cauled Cicero to be killed, as an angry man that has been stung, stamps on a venomous animal that comes within reach of his foot. The cloak he threw over the body of Brutus, and the speech he pronounced at the sight of that hero when dead, differ widely from the treatment he gave the remains of Cicero; and show, that he made a distinction between a Roman who opposed him from political motives, and one whose enmity arose from private pique.

Cicero's death happened on the 7th of December, in the 64th year of his age, about ten days from the settlement of the first triumvirate; and with him expired the short empire of eloquence among the Romans. As an orator he is thus characterized by Dr Blair: "In all his orations his art is conspicuous. He begins commonly with a regular exordium, and with much address prepossesses the hearers, and studies to gain their affections. His method is clear, and his arguments are arranged with exact propriety. In a superior clearness of method, he has an advantage over Demosthenes. Everything appears in its proper place. He never tries to move till he has attempted to convince; and in moving, particularly the softer passions, he is highly successful. No one ever knew the force of words better than Cicero. He rolls them along with the greatest beauty and magnificence; and in the structure of his sentences is eminently curious and exact. He is always full and flowing, never abrupt. He amplifies everything; yet though his manner is generally diffuse, it is often happily varied and accommodated to the subject." an important public object roused his mind, and demanded indignation and force, he departs considerably from that looie and declamatory manner to which he at other times is addicted, and becomes very forcible and vehement. This great orator, however, is not without his defects. In most of his orations there is too much art, even carried to a degree of ostentation. He seems often delirious of obtaining admiration rather than of operating conviction. He is sometimes, therefore, showy rather than solid, and diffuse where he ought to have been urgent. His sentences are always round and sonorous. They cannot be accused of monotony, since they possess variety of cadence; but from too great a fondness for magnificence, he is on some occasions deficient in strength. Though the services which he had performed to his country were very considerable, yet he is too much his own panegyrist. Ancient manners, which imposed fewer restraints on the side of decorum, may in some degree excuse, but cannot entirely justify, his vanity."