whatsoever, supposing only that it exists in excess, disposes a man to
some degree of sympathy with all other grandeur, however alien in its
quality or different in its form. And upon this ground we presume the
great Dictator to have had an interest in religious themes by mere
compulsion of his own extraordinary elevation of mind, after making the
fullest allowance for the special quality of that mind, which did
certainly, to the whole extent of its characteristics, tend entirely to
estrange him from such themes. We find, accordingly, that though sincerely
a despiser of superstition, and with a frankness which must sometimes have
been hazardous in that age, Caesar was himself also superstitious. No man
could have been otherwise who lived and conversed with that generation and
people. But if superstitious, he was so after a mode of his own. In his
very infirmities Caesar manifested his greatness: his very littlenesses
were noble.

"Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre."

That he placed some confidence in dreams, for instance, is certain:
because, had he slighted them unreservedly, he would not have dwelt upon
them afterwards, or have troubled himself to recall their circumstances.
Here we trace his human weakness. Yet again we are reminded that it was
the weakness of Caesar; for the dreams were noble in their imagery, and
Caesarean (so to speak) in their tone of moral feeling. Thus, for example,
the night before he was assassinated, he dreamt at intervals that he was
soaring above the clouds on wings, and that he placed his hand within the
right hand of Jove. It would seem that perhaps some obscure and half-
formed image floated in his mind, of the eagle, as the king of birds;
secondly, as the tutelary emblem under which his conquering legions had so
often obeyed his voice; and, thirdly, as the bird of Jove. To this triple
relation of the bird his dream covertly appears to point. And a singular