ly to Atticus, in which also the private life and
character of Cicero shine to the most advantage, revealing no vices, no
treacheries,--only egotism, vanity, and vacillation, and a way that some
have of speaking about people in private very differently from what they
say in public, which looks like insincerity. In these letters Cicero
appears as a very frank man, genial, hospitable, domestic, witty, whose
society and conversation must have been delightful. In no modern
correspondence do we see a higher perfection in the polished courtesies
and urbanities of social life, with the alloy of vanity, irony, and
discontent. But in these letters he also evinces a friendship which is
immortal; and what is nobler than the capacity of friendship? In these
he not only shines as a cultivated scholar, but as a great statesman and
patriot, living for the good of his country, though not unmindful of the
luxuries of home and the charms of country retirement, and those
enjoyments which are ever associated with refined and favored life. We
read here of pictures, books, medals, statues, curiosities of every
kind, all of which adorned his various villas, as well as his
magnificent palace on Mount Palatine, which cost him what would be equal
in our money to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To keep up this
town house, and some fifteen villas in different parts of Italy, and to
feast the greatest nobles, like Pompey and Caesar, would imply that his
income was enormous, much greater than that of any modern professional
man. And yet he seems to have lived, like Bacon and our Webster, beyond
his income, and was in debt the greater part of his life,--another flaw
in his character; for I do not wish to paint him without faults, but
only as a good as well as a great man, for his times. His private
character was as lofty as that of Chatham or Canning,--if we could
forget his vanity, which after all is not so offensive as the
intellectual pride of Burke and Pitt, and of sundry other great lights
who might be mentioned, conscious of their gifts and attainments. There
is something very different in the egotism of a silly and self-seeking
aristocrat from that of a great benefactor who has something to be proud
of, and with whose private experiences the greatest national deeds are
connected. I speak of this fault because it has been handled too
severely by modern critics. What were the faults of Cicero, compared
with those of Theodosius or Constanti