guileless simplicity. In our own experience we have met with but one similar case of heroic ignorance. This occurred near Caernarvon. A poor Welshwo. man, leaving home to attend an annual meeting of the Methodists, replied to us who had questioned her as to the numerical amount of members likely to assemble ? -That perhaps there would be a matter of four millions!' This in little Caernarvon, that by no possibility could accommodate as many thousands! Yet, in justice to the poor cottager, it should be said that she spoke doubtingly, and with an anxious look, whereas Middleton announces this little bonus of eight 'hundred thousand pounds with a glib fluency that demonstrates him to have seen nothing in the amount worth a comment. Let the reader take with him these little adjuncts of the case. First of all, the money was a mere surplus arising on the public expenditure, and resigned in any case to the suite of the governor, only under the presumption that it must be too trivial to call for any more deliberate appropriation. Secondly, it was the surplus of a single year's expenditure. Thirdly, the province itself was chiefly Grecian in the composition of its population; that is, poor, in a degree not understood by most Englishmen, frugally penurious in its habits. Fourthly, the public service was of the very simplest nature. The administration of justice, and the military application of about eight thousand regular troops to the local seditions of the Isaurian freebooters, or to the occasional sallies from the Parthian frontier- these functions of the proconsul summed up his public duties. To us the marvel is, how there could arise a surplus even equal to eight

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thousand pounds, which some copies countenance. Eight pounds we should have surmised. But to justify Middleton, he ought to have found in the text 'millies' - a reading which exists nowhere. Figures, in such cases, are always so suspicious as scarcely to warrant more than a slight bias to the sense which they establish and words are little better, since they may always have been derived from a previous authority in figures. Meantime, simply as a blunder in accurate scholarship, we should think it unfair to have pressed it. But it is in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good sense and thoughtfulness that we regard it as capital. The man who could believe that a sum not far from a million sterling had arisen in the course of twelve months, as a little bagatelle of office, a potde-vin, mere customary fees, payable to the discretional allotment of one who held the most fleeting relation to the province, is not entitled to an opinion upon any question of doubtful tenor. Had this been the scale of regular profits upon a poor province, why should any Verres create risk for himself by an arbitrary scale?

The cases, therefore, where the merit turns upon money, unavoidably the ultimate question will turn upon the amount. And the very terms of the transaction, as they are reported by Cicero, indicating that the sum was entirely at his own disposal, argue its trivial value. Another argument implies the same construction. Former magistrates, most of whom took such offices with an express view to the creation of a fortune by embezzlement and by bribes, had established the precedent of relinquishing this surplus to

their official 'family.' This fact of itself shows that the amount must have been uniformly trifling: being at all subject to fluctuations in the amount, most certainly it would have been made to depend for its appropriation upon the separate merits of each annual case as it came to be known. In this particular case, Cicero's suite grumbled a little at his decision: he ordered that the money should be carried to the credit of the public. But, had a sum so vast as Middleton's been disposable in mere perquisites, proh deum atque hominum fidem! the honorable gentlemen of the suite would have taken unpleasant liberties with the proconsular throat. They would have been entitled to divide on the average forty thousand pounds a man; and they would have married into senatorian houses. Because a score or so of monstrous fortunes existed in Rome, we must not forget that in any age of the Republic a sum of twenty-five thousand pounds would have constituted a most respectable fortune for a man not embarked upon a public career; and with sufficient connections it would furnish the early costs even for such a career.

We have noticed this affair with some minuteness, both from its importance to the accuser of Verres, and because we shall here have occasion to insist on this very case, as amongst those which illustrate the call for political revolution at Rome. Returning from Cicero the governor to Cicero the man, we may remark, that, although his whole life had been adapted to purposes of ostentation, and à fortiori this particular provincial interlude was sure to challenge from his enemies a vindictive scrutiny, still we find cause to

think Cicero very sincere in his purity as a magistrate. Many of his acts were not mere showy renunciations of doubtful privileges; but were connected with painful circumstances of offence to intimate friends. Indirectly we may find in these cases a pretty ample violation of the Roman morals. Pretended philosophers in Rome who prated in set books about 'virtue' and the summum bonum,' made no scruple, in the character of magistrates, to pursue the most extensive plans of extortion, through the worst abuses of military license; some, as the 'virtuous' Marcus Brutus, not stopping short of murder- a foul case of this description had occurred in the previous year under the sanction of Brutus, and Cicero had to stand his friend in nobly refusing to abet the further prosecution of the very same atrocity. Even in the case of the perquisites, as stated above, Cicero had a more painful duty than that of merely sacrificing a small sum of money: he was summoned by his conscience to offend those men with whom he lived, as a modern prince or ambassador lives amongst the members of his official 'family.' Naturally it could be no trifle to a gentlehearted man, that he was creating for himself a necessity of encountering frowns from those who surrounded him, and who might think, with some reason, that in bringing them to a distant land, he had authorized them to look for all such remunerations as precedent had established. Right or wrong in the casuistical point- we believe him to have been wrong- Cicero was eminently right when once satisfied by arguments, sound or not sound as to the point of duty, in pursuing that duty through all the vexations which it entailed.

This justice we owe him pointedly in a review which has for its general object the condemnation of his political conduct.

Never was a child, torn from its mother's arms to an odious school, more homesick at this moment than was Cicero. He languished for Rome; and when he stood before the gates of Rome, about five months later, not at liberty to enter them, he sighed profound. ly after the vanished peace of mind which he had enjoyed in his wild mountainous province. Quæsivit lucem -ingemuitque repertam.' Vainly he flattered himself that he could compose, by his single mediation, the mighty conflict which had now opened. As he pursued his voyage homewards, through the months of August, September, October, and November, he was met, at every port where he touched for a few days' repose, by reports, more and more gloomy, of the impending rupture between the great partisan leaders. These reports ran along, like the undulations of an earthquake, to the last recesses of the east. Every king and every people had been canvassed for the coming conflict; and many had been already associated by pledges to the one side or the other. The fancy faded away from Cicero's thoughts as he drew nearer to Italy, that any effect could now be anticipated for mediatorial counsels. The controversy, indeed, was still pursued through diplomacy; and the negotiations had not reached an ultimatum from either side. But Cicero was still distant from the parties; and, before it was possible that any general congress representing both interests, could assemble, it was certain that reciprocal distrust would coerce them into irrevocable