soul by the force of his argument, and ardour of his expressions; while the Roman made his way to the heart, alternately moving and allaying the passions of his hearers, by all the arts of rhetoric, and by conforming to their opinions and prejudices. Cicero was not only a great orator, but has also left the fullest instructions and the most complete historical details on the art which he so gloriously practised. His precepts are contained in the dialogue _De Oratore_ and the _Orator_; while the history of Roman eloquence is comprehended in the dialogue entitled, _Brutus, sive De Claris Oratoribus_. In his youth, Cicero had written and published some undigested observations on the subject of eloquence; but considering these as unworthy of the character and experience he afterwards acquired, he applied himself to write a treatise on the art which might be more commensurate to his matured talents. He himself mentions several Sicilians and Greeks, who had written on oratory(346). But the models he chiefly followed, were Aristotle, in his books of rhetoric(347); and Isocrates, the whole of whose theories and precepts he has comprehended in his rhetorical works. He has thrown his ideas on the subject into the form of dialogue or conference, a species of composition, which, however much employed by the Greeks, had not hitherto been attempted at Rome. This mode of writing presented many advantages: By adopting it he avoided that dogmatical air, which a treatise from him on such a subject would necessarily have worn, and was enabled to instruct without dictating rules. Dialogue, too, relieved monotony of style, by affording opportunity of varying it according to the characters of the different speakers—it tempered the austerity of precept by the cheerfulness of conversation, and developed each opinion with the vivacity and fulness naturally employed in the oral discussion of a favourite topic. Add to this, the facility which it presented of paying an acceptable compliment to the friends who were introduced as interlocutors, and its susceptibility of agreeable description of the scenes in which the persons of the dialogue were placed—a species of embellishment, for which ample scope was afforded by the numerous villas of Cicero, situated in the most beautiful spots of Italy, and in every variety of landscape, from the Alban heights to the shady banks of the Liris, or glittering shore of Baiæ. As a method of communicating knowledge, however, (except in discussions which are extremely simple, and susceptible of much delineation of character,) the mode of dialogue is, in many respects, extremely inconvenient. “By the interruptions which are given,” says the author of the life of Tasso, in his remarks on the dialogues of that poet,—“By the interruptions which are given, if a dialogue be at all dramatic—by the preparations and transitions, order and precision must, in a great degree, be sacrificed.