is past a doubt that he had not reached his twentieth year when he had the
hardihood to engage in a struggle with Sylla, then Dictator, and
exercising the immoderate powers of that office with the license and the
severity which history has made so memorable. He had neither any distinct
grounds of hope, nor any eminent example at that time, to countenance him
in this struggle--which yet he pushed on in the most uncompromising style,
and to the utmost verge of defiance. The subject of the contrast gives it
a further interest. It was the youthful wife of the youthful Caesar who
stood under the shadow of the great Dictator's displeasure; not
personally, but politically, on account of her connections: and her it
was, Cornelia, the daughter of a man who had been four times consul, that
Caesar was required to divorce: but he spurned the haughty mandate, and
carried his determination to a triumphant issue, notwithstanding his life
was at stake, and at one time saved only by shifting his place of
concealment every night; and this young lady it was who afterwards became
the mother of his only daughter. Both mother and daughter, it is
remarkable, perished prematurely, and at critical periods of Caesar's life;
for it is probable enough that these irreparable wounds to Caesar's
domestic affections threw him with more exclusiveness of devotion upon the
fascinations of glory and ambition than might have happened under a
happier condition of his private life. That Caesar should have escaped
destruction in this unequal contest with an enemy then wielding the whole
thunders of the state, is somewhat surprising; and historians have sought
their solution of the mystery in the powerful intercessions of the vestal
virgins, and several others of high rank amongst the connections of his
great house. These may have done something; but it is due to Sylla, who
had a sympathy with every thing truly noble, to suppose him struck with
powerful admiration for the audacity of the young patrician, standing out
in such severe solitude among so many examples of timid concession; and
that to this magnanimous feeling in the Dictator, much of his indulgence