harder to comprehend. We fear that the remark of Abeken goes very near the truth-" His devotion to the Commonwealth was grounded not so much upon his conviction of its actual merits, as of its fitness for the display of his own abilities."

But that Commonwealth was past saving, even in name. Within two months of his having been declared a public enemy, all Italy was at Cæsar's feet. Before another year was past the battle of Pharsalia had been fought, and the great Pompey lay a headless corpse on the seashore in Egypt. It was suggested to Cicero who had hitherto remained constant to the fortunes of his party, and was then in their camp at Dyrrachium that he should take the chief command, but he had the sense to decline; and though men called him " traitor," and drew their swords upon him, he withdrew from a cause which he saw was lost, and returned to Italy, though not to Rome.

The meeting between him and Cæsar, which came at last, set at rest any apprehensions from that quarter. Cicero does not appear to have made any dishonourable submission, and the conqueror's behaviour was nobly forgetful of the past. They gradually became on almost friendly terms. Cicero paid the dictator compliments in the Senate, and found that, in private society, his favourite jokes were repeated to the great man, and were highly appreciated. With these little successes he was obliged now to be content. He had again taken up his residence in Rome; but his political occupation was gone, and his active mind had leisure to employ itself in some of his literary works.

It was at this time that the blow fell upon him which prostrated him for the time, as his exile had done, and under which he claims our far more natural sympathy. His dear daughter Tullia-again married, but unhappily, and just divorced died at his Tusculan villa. Their loving intercourse had

undergone no change from her childhood, and his grief was for a while inconsolable. He shut himself up for thirty days. The letters of condolence from well-meaning friends were to him-as they so often are -as the speeches of the three comforters to Job. He turned in vain, as he pathetically says, to philosophy for consolation: when he did find it, it was in hard work.

He was yet to take a part in one great national struggle-the last for Rome and for himself. There was some grandeur, no doubt, in the cause which he once more so vigorously espoused; but all the thunders of Cicero's eloquence, all the admiration of modern poets and historians, fail to enlist our hearty sympathies with the assassins of Cæsar. Those magnificent orations against Antony-better known as the Philippics-would alone confer upon Cicero a deserved immortality; and so far as he withstood that basest of Rome's bad men, Cicero's last days were greater to him than any triumph. But the levity with which he speaks of the assassination of a man who had never treated him, at any rate, with less than a noble forbearance, "is disgusting"we thank Mr Forsyth for that strong word. He wishes that "the gods may damn him after he is dead; and refers to the "Ides of March with the same flippant triumph as to the "Battle of Bovillæ." He was present at that bloody scene in the Capitol, rejoicing in a deed which was to turn out almost what Goethe called it "the most absurd that ever was committed." The great Dictator who lay there alone in his blood, deserted by the very men who had sought of late to crown him, was perhaps Rome's fittest master; certainly not the worst of the many with whom a personal ambition took the place of principle. "Three slaves removed the dead body of their master from where it lay, and carried it to his usual residence." Poor wretches! they knew nothing about liberty or the constitution; they had little to

hope, and probably little to fear; they had only a humble duty to do, and did it. But when we read of them, and of that freedman who, not long before, sat by the dead body of Pompey till he could scrape together wreck from the shore to light some sort of poor funeral-pile, we return with a shudder of disgust to those "noble Romans who occupy at this time the foreground of history.

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In one important point, Cicero showed a wise foresight he had always felt that "as long as Antony lived, all that would be gained by Cæsar's murder would be only a change of masters." Cæsar was dead, but Rome now belonged to those who had the legions. It had come to that and when Antony succeeded in joining interests with young Octavianus Cæsar (afterwards miscalled Augustus)-as yet a boy in years, but premature in craft and falsehood-who came "to claim his inheritance," and succeeded in rousing in the old veterans of his uncle the desire to take vengeance on his murderers, the fate of the Republic and of Cicero was sealed.

It was on a little eyot formed by the river Reno, near Bologna, that Antony, young Cæsar, and Lepidus (the nominal third in what is known as the Second Triumvirate) met to arrange among themselves the division of power, and what they held to be necessary to the securing it for the future-the proscription of their several enemies. No private affections or interests were to be allowed to interfere with this merciless arrangement. If Lepidus would give up his brother, Antony would surrender an uncle. Octavianus made a cheap sacrifice in Cicero, whom Antony, we may be sure, with those philippics ringing in his ears, demanded with an eager vengeance. All was soon amicably settled; the fatal lists were made out, and the Triumvirate occupied Rome.

Cicero and his brother-whose name was known to be also on the

roll-heard of it while they were together at the Tusculan villa. Both took immediate measures for escape. But Quintus had to return to Rome to obtain a supply of money for their flight, and there met his fate

at once.

"It seems that his son had been left behind, and was still there when his father arrived. Quintus concealed himself in the same house with him, but by some means or other the blooding-place. They came, but could not hounds of Antony got scent of his lurkfind him; and, seizing young Quintus, they tortured him to make him betray his father. He nobly refused, but, as we may infer from one of the accounts, the extremity of pain forced from him cries which his father heard: unable to endure the thought of his son's agony, he came forth from his hiding-place, and delivered himself up to the assassins. A heartrending scene followed: each prayed that he might die before the other; and, to end the contest, the murderers killed them both at the same

moment.

Cicero himself might yet have escaped, but for something of his old indecision. He had embarked in a small vessel with the intention of joining Brutus in Macedonia, when his mind suddenly changed, and he insisted on being put on shore again. He wandered about, half-resolving-for the third time -on suicide. He would go to Rome, stab himself on the altar-hearth in young Cæsar's house, and call down the Nemesis of Heaven upon the traitor. The accounts of these last hours of his life are unfortunately somewhat contradictory, and none of the authorities thoroughly to be depended upon; Mr Forsyth, in his narrative, has followed Abeken's careful attempt to harmonise them. Urged by the prayers of his slaves, the faithful adherents of a kind master, he once more embarked, and once more (Appian says, from sea-sickness, which he never could endure) landed near Caieta, where he had a villa. Either there, or, as other accounts say, at his Formian villa, he laid himself down to pass the night, and wait for death.

country, which I have so often saved." But again the faithful slaves aroused him, forced him into a litter, and hurried him down through the woods to the sea-shore -for the assassins were in search of him. They found his house shut up; but some traitor showed them a short cut by which to overtake the fugitive. He heard their steps approaching, and ordered the litter to be set down. He looked out, and recognised at the head of the party a tribune named Lænas, whom he had once successfully defended on a capital charge; but he saw no gratitude or mercy in the face, though there were others who covered their eyes for pity when they saw the dishevelled grey hair and pale worn features of the great Roman. He turned from him to the centurion, one Herennius, and said, "Strike, old soldier, if you understand your trade!" At the third blow-by one or other of those officers - his head was severed. They carried it straight to Antony, where he sat on the seat of justice in the Forum, and claimed the offered reward. The triumvir, in his joy, paid it some ten times over. He sent the bloody trophy to his wife; and the Roman Jezebel spat in the dead face, and ran her bodkin through the tongue which had spoken those bold and bitter truths against her false husband. The head was then nailed upon the Rostra, to speak there more eloquently than ever of the dead liberty of Rome.

Mr Forsyth, at the end of these pleasant volumes, has summed up Cicero's character with modesty, fairness, and ability. He suggests, at the same time, that the reader will do well to form his own estimate from the biography itself. We

believe that he will nowhere find the facts more impartially collected, or put into a more agreeable shape. The passage in which the author gives his own view is too long for extract, but deserves careful reading. He admits to the full not only the vanity for which he more than once paid so dearly, but his want of courage of decision

and, more than all, of sincerity. But he adds, and, we think, with justice

and his anxiety to do what was right "He was egotistical, but not selfish ;

was one chief cause of his irresolution. He would have been a more consistent, if he had been a less scrupulous, man. His lot was cast in times which tried men's souls to the uttermost, and when statesman as virtue. His moral instinct boldness was as much required in a was too strong to allow him to resort to means of which his conscience disapproved; and if he knew he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of remorse. His constant aim was to do right; and although he sometimes deceived himself and made great judgment rather than of his heart." mistakes, they were the errors of his

There was one comprehensive quality wanting in Cicero's nature, which clouded his many excellencies, led him continually into false positions, and even in his delightful letters excites in the reader, from time to time, an impatient feeling of contempt: he wanted manliness. It was a quality which, without doubt, was dying out in his day amongst even the best of the luxurious and corrupt aristocracy of Rome. It was perhaps but little missed in his character by those who knew and loved him best. But without that quality, to an English mind, no man is recognised as the true philosopher or hero.

impatience" it's the last Ireland will see of him."

"Poor Ireland! the failure in the potato-crop was bad enough, but this is more than can be endured."

"That's all very fine, Alice, but I'm much mistaken if you are as indifferent as you pretend."

"Mark! what do you mean?" said she, angrily.

"Here's Raikes now, and will some one tell him what it is we want?" said Mrs Maxwell; but the others were far too deeply engaged in their own whispered controversy now to mind her.

"Captain Lyle will tell you byand-by, Raikes," said she, gathering up the mass of loose impedimenta with which she usually moved from one room to the other, and by which, as they fell at every step, her course could always be tracked. "He'll tell you," added she, moving away. "I think it was caviar, and you are to telegraph for it to Swan & Edgar's; but my head is confused to-day,-I'll just go and lie down."

As Mrs Maxwell left by one door, Alice passed out by another; while Mark, whose temper evinced itself in a flushed cheek and a contracted brow, stood at a window, fretfully tapping the ground with his foot.

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Nearly all, sir. Except your family and Mr Maitland, there's nobody left but Major Clough, and he's going, I believe, with Dr Reede."

"You've heard nothing of Mr Maitland going, have you?"

"Oh, yes, sir! his man sent for post-horses about an hour ago."

Muttering impatiently below his breath, Mark opened the window and passed out upon the lawn. What an unlucky turn had everything taken! It was but a week ago, and his friend Maitland was in high delight with all around him.

The country, the scenery, the people, were all charming-indeed, in the intervals between the showers, he had a good word to say for the climate. As for Lyle Abbey, he pronounced it the perfection of a country-house; and Mark actually speculated on the time when these opinions of his distinguished friend would have acquired a certain currency, and the judgment of one that none disputed would be recorded of his father's house. And all these successes were now to be reversed by this stupid old sailor's folly-insanity he might call it ; for what other word could characterise the pretension that could claim Norman Maitland for a sonin-law ?-Maitland, that might have married, if the law would have let him, half a score of infantas and archduchesses, and who had but to choose throughout Europe the alliance that would suit him. And Alice-what could Alice mean by this impertinent tone she was taking towards him? Had the great man's patience given way under it all, and was he really going away, wearied and tired out?

While Mark thus doubted and reasoned and questioned, Maitland was seated at his breakfast at one side of the fire, while Dr Reede confronted him at the other.

Though Maitland had sent a message to say he wished to see the Doctor, he only gave him now a divided attention, being deeply engaged, even as he talked, in deciphering a telegram which had just reached him, and which was only intelligible through a key to the cipher.

"So then, Doctor, it is simply the return of an old attack—a thing to be expected, in fact, at his time of life?"

"Precisely, sir. He had one last autumn twelvemonth, brought on by a fit of passion. The old Commodore gives way rather to temper."

"Ah! gives way, does he?" muttered Maitland, while he mumbled below his breath, "seventeen thousand and four D+ X, and a gamba