exception a bearing on the one great object to which
with infinite fidelity and consistency he devoted himself;
and of the manifold aspects and directions of his great activity
he never preferred one to another. Although a master of the art of war,
he yet from statesmanly considerations did his utmost to avert
civil strife and, when it nevertheless began, to earn laurels
stained as little as possible by blood. Although the founder
of a military monarchy, he yet, with an energy unexampled in history,
allowed no hierarchy of marshals or government of praetorians
to come into existence. If he had a preference for any one form
of services rendered to the state, it was for the sciences and arts
of peace rather than for those of war.

The most remarkable peculiarity of his action as a statesman
was its perfect harmony. In reality all the conditions
for this most difficult of all human functions were united in Caesar.
A thorough realist, he never allowed the images of the past
or venerable tradition to disturb him; for him nothing was of value
in politics but the living present and the law of reason, just as
in his character of grammarian he set aside historical and antiquarian
research and recognized nothing but on the one hand the living
-usus loquendi- and on the other hand the rule of symmetry.
A born ruler, he governed the minds of men as the wind drives the clouds,
and compelled the most heterogeneous natures to place themselves
at his service--the plain citizen and the rough subaltern, the genteel
matrons of Rome and the fair princesses of Egypt and Mauretania,
the brilliant cavalry-officer and the calculating banker.
His talent for organization was marvellous; no statesman has ever
compelled alliances, no general has ever collected an army
out of unyielding and refractory elements with such decision,
and kept them together with such firmness, as Caesar displayed
in constraining and upholding his coalitions and his legions;
never did regent judge his instruments and assign each to the place
appropriate for him with so acute an eye.

He was monarch; but he never played the king. Even when absolute
lord of Rome, he retained the deportment of the party-leader;
perfectly pliant and smooth, easy and charming in conversation,
complaisant towards every one, it seemed as if he wished to be
nothing but the first among his peers. Caesar entirely avoided
the blunder into which so many men otherwise on an equality with him