forward the troops, who were then at his head-quarters, but in as private
a manner as possible. He himself, by way of masque, (_per
dissimulationem_,) attended a public spectacle, gave an audience to an
architect who wished to lay before him a plan for a school of gladiators
which Caesar designed to build, and finally presented himself at a banquet,
which was very numerously attended. From this, about sunset, he set
forward in a carriage, drawn by mules, and with a small escort (_modico
comitatu_.) Losing his road, which was the most private he could find
(_occultissimum_), he quitted his carriage and proceeded on foot. At
dawn he met with a guide; after which followed the above incidents.]

In the mingled yarn of human life, tragedy is never far asunder from
farce; and it is amusing to retrace in immediate succession to this
incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the
case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met
and confronted by a sea phantom, whilst attempting to double the Cape of
Storms, (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which one felicitous
blunder did Caesar a better service than all the truths which Greece and
Rome could have furnished. In our own experience, we once witnessed a
blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in his first
electioneering contest with the Lowthers, upon some occasion where he was
recriminating upon the other party, and complaining that stratagems, which
_they_ might practise with impunity, were denied to him and his, happened
to point the moral of his complaint, by alleging the old adage, that one
man might steal a horse with more hope of indulgence than another could
look over the hedge. Whereupon, by benefit of the universal mishearing in
the outermost ring of the audience, it became generally reported that Lord
Lowther had once been engaged in an affair of horse stealing; and that he,
Henry Brougham, could (had he pleased) have lodged an information against
him, seeing that he was then looking over the hedge. And this charge