gentleman if he had lived to hear them read.

Young Cicero went through the regular curriculum--grammar, rhetoric, and
the Greek poets and historians. Like many other youthful geniuses, he
wrote a good deal of poetry of his own, which his friends, as was natural,
thought very highly of at the time, and of which he himself retained the
same good opinion to the end of his life, as would have been natural to
few men except Cicero. But his more important studies began after he had
assumed the 'white gown' which marked the emergence of the young Roman
from boyhood into more responsible life--at sixteen years of age. He then
entered on a special education for the bar. It could scarcely be called a
profession, for an advocate's practice at Rome was gratuitous; but it was
the best training for public life;--it was the ready means, to an able and
eloquent man, of gaining that popular influence which would secure
his election in due course to the great magistracies which formed the
successive steps to political power. The mode of studying law at Rome bore
a very considerable resemblance to the preparation for the English bar.
Our modern law-student purchases his admission to the chambers of some
special pleader or conveyancer, where he is supposed to learn his future
business by copying precedents and answering cases, and he also attends
the public lectures at the Inns of Court. So at Rome the young aspirant
was to be found (but at a much earlier hour than would suit the Temple or
Lincoln's Inn) in the open hall of some great jurist's House, listening
to his opinions given to the throng of clients who crowded there every
morning; while his more zealous pupils would accompany him in his stroll
in the Forum, and attend his pleadings in the courts or his speeches on
the Rostra, either taking down upon their tablets, or storing in their
memories, his _dicta_ upon legal questions.[1] In such wise Cicero
became the pupil of Mucius Scaevola, whose house was called "the oracle
of Rome"--scarcely ever leaving his side, as he himself expresses it; and