culably more dangerous, than Catiline.

His clients were nearly all of them miscreants; and, by a singular exercise of divine justice, he at last met death from the hands of one of those wretches whom his skill had extricated from the fangs of human justice."

We answer, that, "regarded in its true light,” the conspiracy of Catiline excited at Rome somewhat more than a 66 slight sensation;" it plunged her into the greatest disturbance and danger. It was terminated only by a battle so bloody, that there is no example of equal carnage, and scarcely any of equal valour. All the soldiers of Catiline, after having killed half of the army of Petreius, were killed, to the last man. Catiline

perished, covered with wounds, upon a heap of the slain; and all were found with their countenances sternly glaring upon the enemy. This was not an enterprise so wonderfully easy to be disconcerted: Cæsar encouraged it; Cæsar learnt from it to conspire on a future day more successfully against his country.

"Cicero defended, without a blush, men more dishonourable, and incalculably more dangerous, than Catiline!"-Was this when he defended in the tribune Sicily against Verres, and the Roman republic against Anthony? Was it when he exhorted the clemency of Cæsar in favour of Ligarius and king Deiotarus? or when he obtained the right of citizenship for the poet Archias? or when, in his exquisite oration for the Manilian law, he obtained every Roman suffrage on behalf of the great Pompey?

He pleaded for Milo, the murderer of Clodius; but Clodius had deserved the tragical end he met with by his outrages. Clodius had been involved in the conspiracy of Catiline; Clodius was his mortal enemy. He had irritated Rome against him, and had punished him for having saved Rome: Milo was his friend.

What! is it in our time that any one ventures to assert, that God punished Cicero for having defended a military tribune called Popilius Lena, and that divine vengeance made this same Popilius Lena the instrument of his assassination! No one knows whether Popilius Lena was guilty of the crime of which he was

acquitted, after Cicero's defence of him upon his trial; but all know that the monster was guilty of the most horrible ingratitude, the most infamous avarice, and the most detestable cruelty, to obtain the money of three wretches like himself. It was reserved for our times to hold up the assassination of Cicero as an act of divine justice. The triumvirs would not have dared to do it. Every age, before the present, has detested and deplored the manner of his death.

Cicero is reproached with too frequently boasting that he had saved Rome, and with being too fond of glory. But his enemies endeavoured to stain his glory. A tyrannical faction condemned him to exile, and razed his house, because be had preserved every house in Rome from the flames which Catiline had prepared for them. Men are permitted and even bound to boast of their services, when they meet with forgetful, ness or ingratitude, and more particularly when they are converted into crimes.

Scipio is still admired for having answered his ac cusers in these words: "This is the anniversary of the day on which I vanquished Hannibal, let us go and return thanks to the gods." The whole assembly followed him to the Capitol, and our hearts follow him thither also, as we read the passage in history; though, after all, it would have been better to have delivered in his accounts, than to extricate himself from the attack by a bon-mot.

Cicero, in the same manner, excited the admiration of the Roman people, when, on the day in which his consulship expired, being obliged to take the customary oaths, and preparing to address the people as was usual, he was hindered by the tribune Metellus, who was desirous of insulting him. Cicero had begun with these words: "I swear"-the tribune interrupted him, and declared that he would not suffer him to make a speech. A great murmuring was heard. Cicero paused a moment, and elevating his full and melodious voice, he exclaimed, as a short substitute for his intended speech, "I swear that I have saved the country." The assembly cried out with delight and enthu

siasm, "We swear that he has spoken the truth." That moment was the most brilliant of his life. This is the true way of loving glory.

I do not know where I have read these unknown

verses:

Romains, j'aime la gloire, et ne veux point m'en taire
Des travaux des humains c'est le digne salaire,

Ce n'est qu'en vous qu'il la faut acheter :
Qui n'ose la vouloir, n'ose la mériter. *

Romans, I own that glory I regard

Of human toil the only just reward;

Placed in your hands th' immortal guerdon lies,
And he will ne'er deserve who slights the prize.

Can we despise Cicero, if we consider his conduct in his government of Cilicia, which was then one of the most important provinces of the Roman empire, in consequence of its contiguity to Syria and the Parthian empire. Laodicea, one of the most beautiful cities of the east, was the capital of it. This province was then as flourishing as it is at the present day degraded under the government of the Turks, who never had a Cicero.

He begins by protecting Ariobarzanes, king of Cappadocia, and he refuses the presents which that king desires to make him. The Parthians come and attack Antioch in a state of perfect peace. Cicero hastily marches towards it, comes up with the Parthians by forced marches at Mount Taurus, routs them, pursues them in their retreat; and Arsaces, their general, is slain, with a part of his army.

Thence he rushes on Pendenissum, the capital of a country in alliance with the Parthians, and takes it, and the province is reduced to submission. He instantly directs his forces against the tribes of people called Tiburanians, and defeats them, and his troops confer on him the title of Imperator, which he preserved all his life. He would have obtained the honours of a triumph at Rome if he had not been opposed by

"Rome Saved," act v. scene 2, vol. iv.-These lines are so far from being unknown, that every Frenchman of educa tion and taste knows them by heart.-Note of French Editor..

Cato, who induced the senate merely to decree public rejoicings and thanks to the gods, when, in fact, they were due to Cicero.

If we picture to ourselves the equity and disinterestedness of Cicero in his government; his activity, his affability-two virtues so rarely compatible; the benefits which he accumulated upon the people over whom he was an absolute sovereign; it will be extremely difficult to withhold from such a man our

esteem.

If we reflect that this is the same man who first introduced philosophy into Rome; that his "Tusculan Questions," and his book "On the Nature of the Gods," are the two noblest works that ever were written by mere human wisdom; and that his treatise "De Officiis" is the most useful one that we possess in morals; we shall find it still more difficult to despise Cicero. We pity those who do not read him; we pity still more those who refuse to do him justice.

To the French detractor we may well oppose the lines of the Spaniard Martial, in his epigram against Anthony (book v. epig. 69, v. 7.)—

Quid prosunt sacræ pretiosa silentia linguæ ?
Incipient omnes pro Cicerone loqui.

Why still his tongue with vengeance weak,
For Cicero all the world will speak!

See likewise what is said by Juvenal (sat. iv. v. 244.)

Roma patrem patriæ Ciceronem libera dixit.
Freed Rome, him father of his country call'd.

CIRCUMCISION.

WHEN Herodotus narrates what he was told by the barbarians among whom he travelled, he narrates fooleries, after the manner of the greater part of travellers. Thus, it is not to be supposed that he expects to be believed in his recital of the adventure of Gyges and Candaules; of Arion, carried on the back of a dolphin; of the oracle which was consulted on what Croesus was at the time

doing, that he was then going to dress a tortoise in a stew-pan; of Darius's horse, which, being the first out of a certain number to neigh, in fact proclaimed his master a king; and of a hundred other fables, fit to amuse children, and to be compiled by rhetoricians. But when he speaks of what he has seen, of the customs of people he has examined, of their antiquities which he has consulted, he then addresses himself to

men.

"It appears," says he, in his book Euterpe, " that the inhabitants of Colchis sprang from Egypt. I judge so from my own observations rather than from hearsay; for I found that, at Colchis, the ancient Egyp tians were more frequently recalled to my mind, *than the ancient customs of Colchis were when I was in Egypt.

"These inhabitants of the shores of the Euxine sea stated themselves to be a colony founded by Sesostris. As for myself, I should think this probable, not merely because they are dark and woolly-haired, but because the inhabitants of Colchis, Egypt, and Ethiopia, are the only people in the world who, from time immemorial, have practised circumcision: for the Phenicians, and the people of Palestine, confess that they adopted the practice from the Egyptians. The Syrians, who at present inhabit the banks of Thermodon, acknowledge that it is, comparatively, but recently that they have conformed to it. It is principally from this usage that they are considered of Egyptian origin.

"With respect to Ethiopia and Egypt, as this ceremony is of great antiquity in both nations, I cannot by any means ascertain which has derived it from the other. It is, however, probable, that the Ethiopians received it from the Egyptians; while, on the contrary, the Phenicians have abolished the practice of circumcising new-born children since the enlargement of their commerce with the Greeks."

From this passage of Herodotus it is evident, that many people had adopted circumcision from Egypt; but no nation ever pretended to have received it from the Jews. To whom, then, can we attribute the ori