foes of popular rights. Nor could they for a moment blind the people to the nature and object of their action; for as soon as the murder had been committed, the universal cry for justice, which rose at once from the whole mass of the people, indignant at the butchery of their friend, drove the gang of conspirators from Rome and from Italy, which they were never permitted again to enter. Those who thronged to the standards of the heir and friend of Caesar, were the hosts of democracy, who never rested till they had crushed and exterminated the miserable faction of aristocrats, who had hoped to triumph over the mass of the people, by the death of the people’s great friend. Now if the people of Rome chose to give up their whole power, and the disposal of their political affairs, into the hands of a great, a talented, a generous and heroic man, like Caesar, who had so effectually vindicated and secured their freedom against the claims of a domineering aristocracy, and if they afterwards remained so well satisfied with the use which he made of this power, as never to make the slightest effort, nor on any occasion to express the least wish, to resume it, I would like to know who had any business to hinder the sovran people from so doing, or what blame can in any way be laid to Caesar’s charge, for accepting, and for nobly and generously using the power so freely and heartily given up to him. The protracted detail of his mental and physical greatness, given in the sketch of his character above, would need for its full defense and illustration, the mention of such numerous particulars, that I must be content with challenging any doubter, to a reference to the record of the actions of his life, and such a reference will abundantly confirm every particular of the description. The steady and unanimous decision of the learned and the truly great of different ages, since his time, is enough to show his solid claims to the highest praise here given. Passing over the glory so uniformly yielded to him by the learned and eloquent of ancient days, we have among moderns the disinterested opinions of such men as the immortal Lord Verulam, from whom came the sentence given above, pronouncing him “the most perfect character of all antiquity;” a sentiment which, probably, no man of minute historical knowledge ever read, without a hearty acquiescence. This opinion has been quoted with approbation by our own greatest statesman, Alexander Hamilton, than whom none knew better how to appreciate real greatness. Lord Byron (Note 47 on Canto IV. of Childe Harold,) also quotes this sentence approvingly, and in the same passage gives a most interesting view of Caesar’s versatile genius and varied accomplishments, entering more fully into some particulars than that here given. The sentence of the Roman historian, Suetonius, (_Jure_ caesus existimetur,) seems to me to refer, not to