_not_ to have been left open to any body in the nineteenth century.

3. CICERO.--This is not, as might be imagined, any literary valuation
of Cicero; it is a new reading of Roman history in the most dreadful
and comprehensive of her convulsions, in that final stage of her
transmutations to which Cicero was himself a party--and, as I maintain,
a most selfish and unpatriotic party. He was governed in one half by
his own private interest as a _novus homo_ dependent upon a wicked
oligarchy, and in the other half by his blind hatred of Caesar; the
grandeur of whose nature he could not comprehend, and the real
patriotism of whose policy could never be appreciated by one bribed
to a selfish course. The great mob of historians have but one way of
constructing the great events of this era--they succeed to it as to
an inheritance, and chiefly under the misleading of that _prestige_
which is attached to the name of Cicero; on which account it was that
I gave this title to my essay. Seven years after it was published,
this essay, slight and imperfectly developed as is the exposition of
its parts, began to receive some public countenance.

I was going on to abstract the principle involved in some other essays.
But I forbear. These specimens are sufficient for the purpose of
informing the reader that I do not write without a thoughtful
consideration of my subject; and also, that to think reasonably upon
any question has never been allowed by me as a sufficient ground for
writing upon it, unless I believed myself able to offer some considerable
novelty. Generally I claim (not arrogantly, but with firmness) the merit
of rectification applied to absolute errors or to injurious limitations
of the truth.

Finally, as a third class, and, in virtue of their aim, as a far higher