There has been a disposition manifested among modern writers to disturb the traditional characters of Cæsar and his chief antagonist. Audaciously to disparage Cæsar, and without a shadow of any new historic grounds to exalt his feeble competitor, has been adopted as the best chance for filling up the mighty gulf between them. Lord Brougham, for instance, on occasion of a dinner given by the Cinque Ports at Dover to the Duke of Wellington, vainly attempted to raise our countryman by unfounded and romantic depreciations of Cæsar. He alleged that Cæsar had contended only with barbarians. Now, _that_ happens to be the literal truth as regards Pompey. The victories on which his early reputation was built were won from semi-barbarians--luxurious, it is true, but also effeminate in a degree never suspected at Rome until the next generation. The slight but summary contest of Cæsar with Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, dissipated at once the cloud of ignorance in which Rome had been involved on this subject by the vast distance and the total want of familiarity with Oriental habits. But Cæsar's chief antagonists, those whom Lord Brougham specially indicated, viz., the Gauls, were _not_ barbarians. As a military people, they were in a stage of civilization next to that of the Romans. They were quite as much _aguerris_, hardened and seasoned to war, as the children of Rome. In certain military habits they were even superior. For purposes of war four races were then pre-eminent in Europe--viz., the Romans, the Macedonians, certain select tribes among the mixed population of the Spanish peninsula, and finally the Gauls. These were all open to the recruiting parties of Cæsar; and among them all he had deliberately assigned his preference to the Gauls. The famous legion, who carried the _Alauda_ (the lark) upon their helmets, was raised in Gaul from Cæsar's private funds. They composed a select and favored division in his army, and, together with the famous tenth legion, constituted a third part of his forces--a third numerically on the day of battle, but virtually a half. Even the rest of Cæsar's army had been for so long a space recruited in the Gauls, Transalpine as well as Cisalpine, that at Pharsalia the bulk of his forces is known to have been Gaulish. There were more reasons than one for concealing that fact. The policy of Cæsar was, to conceal it not less from Rome than from the army itself. But the truth became known at last to all wary observers. Lord Brougham's objection to the quality of Cæsar's enemies falls away at once when it is collated with the deliberate composition of Cæsar's own army. Besides that, Cæsar's enemies were _not_ in any exclusive sense Gauls. The German tribes, the Spanish, the Helvetian, the Illyrian, Africans of every race, and Moors; the islanders of the Mediterranean, and the mixed populations of Asia, had all been faced by Cæsar. And if it is alleged that the forces of Pompey, however superior in numbers, were at