the secret murmurings of the man's soul
were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from them
would he be judged by the "historians to come in 600 years,"[269] of
whose good word he thought so much. "Quid vero historiae de nobis ad
annos DC. praedicarint!" he says, to Atticus. How is it that from them,
after 2000 years, the Merivales, Mommsens, and Froudes condemn their
great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been found
worthy of so long a life! Is there not an injustice in falling upon a
man's private words, words when written intended only for privacy, and
making them the basis of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall
be arraigned forever as a coward? It is said that he was unjust even to
Atticus, accusing even Atticus of lukewarmness. What if he did so--for
an hour? Is that an affair of ours? Did Atticus quarrel with him? Let
any leader of these words who has lived long enough to have an old
friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of anger in
his heart--of anger of which he has soon learned to recognize the
injustice? He may not have written his angel, but then, perhaps, he has
not had the pen of a Cicero. Let those who rebuke the unmanliness of
Cicero's wailings remember what were his sufferings. The story has yet
to be told, but I may in rough words describe their nature. Everything
was to be taken from him: all that he had--his houses, his books, his
pleasant gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves,
and possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. He was
driven out from Italy and so driven that no place of delight could be
open to him. Sicily, where he had friends, Athens, where he might have
lived, were closed against him. He had to look where to live, and did
live for a while on money borrowed from his friends. All the cherished
occupations of his life were over for him--the law courts, the Forum,
the Senate, and the crowded meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his
words. The circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and
children, so that he was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as
far as Roman law could assure it. Let us think of the condition of some
great and serviceable Englishman in similar circumstances. Let us
suppose that Sir Robert Peel had been impeached, and forced by some
iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the
houses at Whitehall Gardens and at Drayton had bee