With regard to natural philosophy, Quintilian has a sentiment so truly sublime, that to omit it in this place would look like insensibility. If, says he, the universe is conducted by a superintending Providence, it follows that good men should govern the nations of the earth. And if the soul of man is of celestial origin, it is evident that we should tread in the paths of virtue, all aspiring to our native source, not slaves to passion, and the pleasures of the world. These are important topics; they often occur to the public orator, and demand all his eloquence. _Nam si regitur providentiâ mundus, administranda certè bonis viris erit respublica. Si divina nostris animis origo, tendendum ad virtutem, nec voluptatibus terreni corporis serviendum. An hoc non frequenter tractabit orator?_ Quint. lib. xii. cap. 2. Section XXXI. [a] Quintilian, as well as Seneca, has left a collection of school-declamations, but he has given his opinion of all such performances. They are mere imitation, and, by consequence, have not the force and spirit which a real cause inspires. In public harangues, the subject is founded in reality; in declamations, all is fiction. _Omnis imitatio ficta est; quo fit ut minus sanguinis ac virium declamationes habeant, quam orationes; quod in his vera, in illis assimulata materia est._ Lib. x. cap. 2. Petronius has given a lively description of the rhetoricians of his time. The consequence, he says, of their turgid style, and the pompous swell of sounding periods, has ever been the same: when their scholars enter the forum, they look as if they were transported into a new world. The teachers of rhetoric have been the bane of all true eloquence. _Hæc ipsa tolerabilia essent, si ad eloquentiam ituris viam facerent: nunc et rerum tumore, et sententiarum vanissimo strepitu, hoc tantum proficiunt, ut quum in forum venerint, putent se in alium terrarum orbem delatos. Pace vestrâ liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis._ Petron. _in Satyrico_, cap. 1 and 2. That gay writer, who passed his days in luxury and voluptuous pleasures (see his character, _Annals_, b. xvi. s. 18), was, amidst all his dissipation, a man of learning, and, at intervals, of deep reflection. He knew the value of true philosophy, and, therefore, directs the young orator to the Socratic school, and to that plan of education which we have before us in the present Dialogue. He bids his scholar begin with Homer, and there drink deep of the Pierian spring: after that, he recommends the moral system; and, when his mind is thus enlarged, he allows him to wield the arms of Demosthenes. ----Det primos versibus annos, Mæoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem: Mox et Socratico plenus grege mutet habenas Liber, et ingentis quatiat Demosthenis arma.