The _Cæsar_ was a thing of itself. My friend John Blackwood had set on foot a series of small volumes called _Ancient Classics for English Readers_, and had placed the editing of them, and the compiling of many of them, in the hands of William Lucas Collins, a clergyman who, from my connection with the series, became a most intimate friend. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ had already come out when I was at Edinburgh with John Blackwood, and, on my expressing my very strong admiration for those two little volumes,--which I here recommend to all young ladies as the most charming tales they can read,--he asked me whether I would not undertake one myself. _Herodotus_ was in the press, but, if I could get it ready, mine should be next. Whereupon I offered to say what might be said to the readers of English on _The Commentaries of Julius Cæsar_. I at once went to work, and in three months from that day the little book had been written. I began by reading through the Commentaries twice, which I did without any assistance either by translation or English notes. Latin was not so familiar to me then as it has since become,--for from that date I have almost daily spent an hour with some Latin author, and on many days many hours. After the reading what my author had left behind him, I fell into the reading of what others had written about him, in Latin, in English, and even in French,--for I went through much of that most futile book by the late Emperor of the French. I do not know that for a short period I ever worked harder. The amount I had to write was nothing. Three weeks would have done it easily. But I was most anxious, in this soaring out of my own peculiar line, not to disgrace myself. I do not think that I did disgrace myself. Perhaps I was anxious for something more. If so, I was disappointed.