CICERO’S STYLE.—Cicero has always been commended for the cadence of his periods. The art of framing harmonious balanced sentences was his special study, and the Latin language, which he perfected in beauty and richness, was well adapted to his purpose. His style is often exuberant, for he cultivated the flowers of rhetoric. Character he sketched with a powerful pen, and his speeches are enlivened with abundant illustrations drawn from the wonderful storehouse of his memory. Too often, however, vanity crops out, to mar the effect. Quintilian declared that as an orator Cicero combined “the force of Demosthenes, the copiousness of Plato, and the elegance of Isocrates.” Through all his works flows a current of mingled majesty and sweetness. Merivale aptly styles him “the most consummate specimen of the Roman character under the influence of Hellenic culture.” CICERO ON PROVIDENCE. [From the Treatise on the Nature of the Gods.] “There are and have been philosophers who have given it as their opinion that the gods exercise no superintending care whatever over human affairs. Now, if the opinion of these men be true, what becomes of piety? what of public worship? what of religion itself? For all these marks of homage are to be rendered in a pure and holy spirit unto the majesty of the gods, only in case they are observed by these same, and in case any favor has been bestowed by the immortal gods on the race of men. If, however, the gods are neither able nor willing to assist us; if they take no care whatever of us; if they mark not what we do; if there is nothing that can come from them and exercise an influence on the lives of men,—what reason is there why we are to pay any adoration, render any honors, offer any prayers, to the immortal gods? Piety, just as much as the other virtues, cannot exist in outward show and empty feignings; while along with piety, both public worship and religion itself must of necessity be done away with. Remove these, and a great disturbance and total confusion of life ensue. Nay, indeed, I do not know whether, if piety toward the gods be removed, good faith also, and every social tie that binds together the human race, and justice too, that most excellent of all virtues, would not be removed along with it.”—CHARLES ANTHON. =Varro= (116-28 B.C.).—The great central sun of the Republican Era was Cicero, compared with whom the brightest of his contemporaries seem but as lesser luminaries whose light is swallowed up in his. Of these, Marcus Terentius Varro was perhaps the greatest. Years of incessant application, which a boyhood passed among the Sabine mountains at Reate (_re’ă-te_) had prepared him to endure, won for Varro the proud title “Most Learned of the Romans.”