hin a few weeks of his murder," but eighteen
months before that event, at a time when Cicero still hoped that
Caesar would be moderate. If Cicero's Republic was a narrow
oligarchy, it was also the only form of constitutional and civilian
government which he knew or could imagine. He failed to preserve it.
He was murdered like Caesar himself. Neither of them believed that
political assassination was a crime. Cicero's only regret was that
Antony had not been killed with Caesar. Antony's chief desire, which
he accomplished, was to kill Cicero. The idea that Cicero was a mere
declaimer, who did not count, never occurred either to Caesar or to
Antony. It was left for Professor Mommsen to discover. Froude,
always on the look-out for examples of his theory, or his father's
theory, that orators must be useless and mistaken, seized it with an
eager gasp. An agreeable looseness of treatment pervades the book,
and "patricians" appear as wealthy leaders of fashionable society,
being in fact a small number of old Roman families, who might be
poor, or in trade, and could not legally under the Republic be
increased in number, resembling rather a Hindu caste than any
institution of Western Christendom. In Caesar's time they had almost
died out, and the aristocracy of the day was an aristocracy of
office. The book, however, though far from faultless, though in some
respects misleading, has a singular fascination, the charm of a
picture drawn by the hand of a master with consummate skill. As an
historical study, what the French call une etude, it deserves a very
high place, and it contains one sentence which all democrats would
do well to learn:

"Popular forms are possible only when individual men can govern
their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more
importance than pleasure, and justice than material expediency."

That represents the best side of Carlyle's teaching; the
subordination of material objects, the supremacy of the moral law.
Carlyle, however, did not care for the book, as appears in the
following letter from Froude to Lady Derby:

"April 26th, 1879.--You are a most kind critic. If I have succeeded
in creating interest in so old a subject my utmost wishes are
accomplished. I am very curious indeed to hear what Lord D. says. I
can guess that he thinks I ought to have said more in defence of the
Constitutionalists, and that I have hardly used Cicero. Carlyle
reduced me to the condition of a 'drenched hen'