profligacy by which they were severally characterized. Manifest proofs of the whole plot having been at length obtained, by the arrest of the ambassadors from the Allobroges, with whom the conspirators had tampered, and who were bearing written credentials from them to their own country, Cicero, in his third oration, laid before the people all the particulars of the discovery, and invited them to join in celebrating a thanksgiving, which had been decreed by the Senate to his honour, for the preservation of his country. The last Catilinarian oration was pronounced in the Senate, on the debate concerning the punishment to be inflicted on the conspirators. Silanus had proposed the infliction of instant death, while Cæsar had spoken in favour of the more lenient sentence of perpetual imprisonment. Cicero does not precisely declare for any particular punishment; but he shows that his mind evidently inclined to the severest, by dwelling on the enormity of the conspirators’ guilt, and aggravating all their crimes with much acrimony and art. His sentiments finally prevailed; and those conspirators, who had remained in Rome, were strangled under his immediate superintendence. In these four orations, the tone and style of each of them, particularly of the first and last, is very different, and accommodated with a great deal of judgment to the occasion, and to the circumstances under which they were delivered. Through the whole series of the Catilinarian orations, the language of Cicero is well calculated to overawe the wicked, to confirm the good, and encourage the timid. It is of that description which renders the mind of one man the mind of a whole assembly, or a whole people(323).