His age was not an age of poetry; but he paved the way for poetry by investing the language with those graces which are indispensable to its perfection. He freed it from all coarseness and harshness, and accustomed the educated classes to use language, even in their every-day conversation, which never called up gross ideas, but was fit for pure and noble sentiments. Before his time, Latin was plain-spoken, and therefore vigorous; but the penalty which was paid for this was, that it was sometimes gross and even indecent. The conversational language of the upper classes became in the days of Cicero in the highest degree refined: it admitted scarcely an offensive expression. The truth of this assertion is evident from those of his writings which are of the familiar character—from his graphic Dialogues, in which he describes the circumstances as naturally as if they really occurred; from his letters to Atticus, in which he lays open the secret thoughts of his heart to his most intimate friend, his second self. Cicero purified the language morally as well as æsthetically. It was the licentious wantonness of the poets which degraded the pleasures of the imagination by pandering to the passions at first in language delicately veiled, and then by open and disgusting sensuality. It is difficult for us, perhaps, to whom religion comes under the aspect of revelation separate from philosophy, and who consider the philosophical investigation of moral subjects as different from the religious view of morals, to form an adequate conception of the pure and almost holy nature of the conversations of Cicero and his distinguished contemporaries. To them philosophy was the contemplation of the nature and attributes of the Supreme Being. The metaphysical analysis of the internal nature of man was the study of immortality and the evidence for another life. Cato, for example, read the Phædo of Plato in his last moments in the same serious spirit in which the Christian would read the words of inspiration. The study of ethics was that of the sanctions with which God has supported duty and enlightened the conscience. They were the highest subjects with which the mind of man could be conversant. For men to meet together, as was the habitual practice of Cicero and his friends, and pass their leisure hours in such discussions, was the same as if Christians were to make the great truths of the gospel the subjects of social converse.