e way of
heroes, as we read of them; but it is the way with men as we live with
them.

What a man he would have been for London life! How he would have enjoyed
his club, picking up the news of the day from all lips, while he seemed
to give it to all ears! How popular he would have been at the Carlton,
and how men would have listened to him while every great or little
crisis was discussed! How supreme he would have sat on the Treasury
bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous, when attacking the
Government from the opposite seats! How crowded would have been his rack
with invitations to dinner! How delighted would have been the
middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual
flirtations--and the girls of the period, how proud to get his
autograph, how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator
with theirs! How the pages of the magazines would have run over with
little essays from his pen! "Have you seen our Cicero's paper on
agriculture? That lucky fellow, Editor ----, got him to do it last month!"
"Of course you have read Cicero's article on the soul. The bishops don't
know which way to turn." "So the political article in the _Quarterly_ is
Cicero's?" "Of course you know the art-criticism in the _Times_ this
year is Tully's doing?" But that would probably be a bounce. And then
what letters he would write! With the penny-post instead of travelling
messengers at his command, and pen instead of wax and sticks, or perhaps
with an instrument-writer and a private secretary, he would have
answered all questions and solved all difficulties. He would have so
abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known
whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his want
of reticence.

There will necessarily be much to be said of Cicero's writings in the
following pages, as it is my object to delineate the literary man as
well as the politician. In doing this, there arises a difficulty as to
the sequence in which his works should be taken. It will hardly suit the
purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or
separately as to their subjects. The speeches and the letters clearly
require the former treatment as applying each to the very moment of time
at which they were either spoken or written. His treatises, whether on
rhetoric or on the Greek philosophy, or on government, or on morals, can
best be taken apart as belonging in a very small deg