all qualities which Cato thoroughly well knew they possessed.

THE AGE OF CAESAR.--The age of Caesar was a great literary epoch. Before
all and almost over all was Caesar himself: great orator, letter-writer,
grammarian, and historian. His _Commentaries_, that is, his memoirs,
history of his campaigns, are admirable in their conciseness and
precision of rapid and running narrative. Apart from him, Cornelius Nepos
made a very clear abridgment, characterised by marked sobriety, of
universal history under the title of _Chronica_. Varro, a kind of
encyclopaedist, wrote a _De Re Rustica_, also a work on the Latin
language, _Menippic Satires_--satires it is true, but mixtures of
prose and verse--and a work on _Roman Life_, as well as a crowd of
small books dealing with every possible subject. Cicero told him, "You
have taught us all things human and divine." He possessed immense
erudition and a violent mind not without charm. He can be imagined as a
sage of our own sixteenth century.

CICERO.--Cicero was perhaps the greatest _litterateur_ that has ever
lived. It is obvious that all tastes were in his soul at the same time,
as Voltaire said of himself, and he gratified them all. He was
politician, lawyer, orator, poet, philosopher, professor of rhetoric,
moralist, grammarian, political writer, correspondent; he encompassed all
human knowledge, involved himself in all human matters and was a very
great writer. What to-day interests us most in his immense output are his
political discourses, his letters and his moral treatises. His political
discourses are those of an honest man who always held upright views and
the sentiment of the great interests of his country; his letters are
those of a witty man and of an excellent friend; his moral treatises,
more particularly his _De Officiis_ (On Duties), are in a very
elevated spirit which subordinates all other human duties beneath