is--under the rule of despotic princes, truly large subjects are not
allowed to be discussed in public--confessing, however, that those
large subjects, though they afford fine opportunities to orators, are
not beneficial to the State at large. But it was thus, he says, that
Cicero became what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he
defended only P. Quintius and Archias, and had had nothing to do with
Catiline, or Milo, or Verres, or Antony--showing, by-the-way, how
great was the reputation of that speech, Pro Milone, with which we
shall have to deal farther on.

The treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having
probably been lost. From whose mouth the last words are supposed to
come is not apparent. It ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial
government--suitable, indeed, to the time of Domitian, but very unlike
Tacitus. While, however, it praises despotism, it declares that
only by the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence
be maintained. "Our country, indeed, while it was astray in its
government; while it tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and
discord; while there was no peace in the Forum, no agreement in the
Senate, no moderation on the judgment-seat, no reverence for letters,
no control among the magistrates, boasted, no doubt, a stronger
eloquence."

From what we are thus told of Cicero, not what we hear from himself,
we are able to form an idea of the nature of his education. With his
mind fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something
noble with himself, he gave himself up to all kinds of learning. It
was Macaulay, I think, who said of him that the idea of conquering the
"omne scibile--the understanding of all things within the reach of
human intellect--was before his eyes as it was before those of Bacon.