For this consulship, Cicero indeed got thanks for the moment; but instead of gaining for him lasting gratitude, it only brought upon him enmity and detraction. This is one of the saddest lessons taught us by the observation of human affairs. It is quite natural for a distinguished man to put forth his claims to acknowledgment; just as the striving after truth is a deep-rooted impulse of our nature:—a true saint, like Vincent de Paul, could alone have raised himself above such a weakness. Plato justly says, “the last garment which the pure man doffs, is the love of fame;” and when he does cast it off, he generally stands on most dangerous ground. When I bethink myself of the crying evil of our age, then I see with pain that there are so few who are bent upon seeking deathless fame: this wretched unsatisfying life, which is all for the present moment, leads to no good. He who yearns after glory from posterity, is sure to be a good man; and even his own age also must acknowledge, and must honour him. The only poetical genius among the Germans now living, Count Platen, has a painful longing after renown, and often speaks of his not being appreciated by the men of his day. Cicero was of a morbid sensibility: if it is in the power of a great man always to command and to act, he cares less whether he is honoured or not; but if he is only able to command the souls of men, and not their bodies, he is much more susceptible with regard to such matters. Cicero was keenly, and even morbidly alive to anything like a slight; any injury, or ill-will, any kind of envy upset him. Unhappily, he tried to overcome this by putting himself forward to show to the people what he was, sometimes chiding, and at other times remonstrating with them. They were certainly the vainest of all men, who in the most highly edifying language forsooth! have written on Cicero’s vanity: I am grieved at it, as I love Cicero as if I had known him, and also feel hurt by the scoffs which even the ancients already uttered against him. A source of great heart-burning to him, was the mortification which he suffered from Pompey’s indifference. He must have known very little of the latter before he went to Asia, and they can only have met during Pompey’s first consulship; on what terms of friendliness they were, cannot be known: at that time, Cicero was ædile. Afterwards, Pompey was for the most part absent, whereas Cicero was always at Rome. Pompey, full of his victories over Mithridates, thought of no one in all the republic but himself; and when Cicero wrote an unfortunate letter to him in Asia, in which he told him of the events in Rome, to make him aware of what he himself had done for the good of the country, he answered coldly: he took it as an offence, that Cicero should have presumed, in the face of his own achievements, to speak of what he too had done for his country. Another motive were the aristocratical airs which Pompey was pleased to give