_Contra Catilinam_. The detection and suppression of that nefarious plot, form the most glorious part of the political life of Cicero; and the orations he pronounced against the chief conspirator, are still regarded as the most splendid monuments of his eloquence. It was no longer to defend the rights and prerogatives of a municipal town or province, nor to move and persuade a judge in favour of an unfortunate client, but to save his country and the republic, that Cicero ascended the Rostrum. The conspiracy of Catiline tended to the utter extinction of the city and government. Cicero, having discovered his design, (which was to leave Rome and join his army, assembled in different parts of Italy, while the other conspirators remained within the walls, to butcher the Senators and fire the capital,) summoned the Senate to meet in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, with the intention of laying before it the whole circumstances of the plot. But Catiline having unexpectedly appeared in the midst of the assembly, his audacity impelled the consular orator into an abrupt invective, which is directly addressed to the traitor, and commences without the preamble by which most of his other harangues are introduced. In point of effect, this oration must have been perfectly electric. The disclosure to the criminal himself of his most secret purposes—their flagitious nature, threatening the life of every one present—the whole course of his villainies and treasons, blazoned forth with the fire of incensed eloquence—and the adjuration to him, by flying from Rome, to free his country from such a pestilence, were all wonderfully calculated to excite astonishment, admiration, and horror. The great object of the whole oration, was to drive Catiline into banishment; and it appears somewhat singular, that so dangerous a personage, and who might have been so easily convicted, should thus have been forced, or even allowed, to withdraw to his army, instead of being seized and punished. Catiline having escaped unmolested to his camp, the conduct of the Consul in not apprehending, but sending away this formidable enemy, had probably excited some censure and discontent; and the second Catilinarian oration was in consequence delivered by Cicero, in an assembly of the people, in order to justify his driving the chief conspirator from Rome. A capital punishment, he admits, ought long since to have overtaken Catiline, but such was the spirit of the times, that the existence of the conspiracy would not have been believed, and he had therefore resolved to place his guilt in a point of view so conspicuous, that vigorous measures might without hesitation be adopted, both against Catiline and his accomplices. He also takes this opportunity to warn his audience against those bands of conspirators who still lurked within the city, and whom he divides into various classes, describing, in the strongest language, the different degrees of guilt and