During the civil war, Varro sided with Pompey. After the triumph of Cæsar, he retired from public life to his favorite studies, the victor magnanimously recognizing his merit by placing him in charge of the public library at Rome. The material results of his literary labors enabled him to live like a prince, and we find him the proprietor of three sumptuous country-seats, one of which was celebrated for its costly marble aviary of three thousand song-birds—Varro’s pets. All this wealth did not escape the notice of the rapacious triumvirs after the assassination of Cæsar. The name of Varro, then more than seventy, was placed on the proscription list; his property was confiscated; and Antony sacked his beautiful villa at Casi’num, committing his invaluable library to the flames. The old man owed his life to friends, who concealed him from his implacable foe till the order for his murder was countermanded. Augustus afterward restored his fortune, but Varro always keenly missed the society of his books. At the advanced age of eighty, he composed, in dialogue form, an admirable work “On Husbandry,” written in a brisk and entertaining style. The genius of Varro was remarkably versatile; as over six hundred different books on various subjects, in both prose and verse, abundantly testify. In fertility he surpassed all other Romans; and we can but wonder, with St. Augustine, how he found time to write so much. His most creditable work was his “Antiquities Divine and Human,” a lost treasure, of which the present age, with its profound interest in the religions of the past, severely feels the want. Varro also prepared a treatise “On the Latin Language,” edited a popular encyclopædia of the liberal arts, and wrote on history. Throughout his works he appears as a pure patriot, a defender of ancient simplicity and virtue. His satires on effeminacy and affectation are caustic; no one can help enjoying his humorous etchings of the spruce dandy, the dainty epicure, and the finical poet who gargles his throat before reciting his pieces. In every kind of writing that he attempted (and there was little he did not attempt) he is worthy of respect: the familiar line from Dr. Johnson’s epitaph on our own Goldsmith, would apply with equal force to Varro—“He touched nothing that he did not adorn.” Little survives of Varro’s writings beyond the treatise on agriculture, and a part of that on the Latin language.