And this spirit, which confined government to its simple duties, while it left opinion unfettered, was especially present in Julius Caesar himself. From cant of all kinds he was totally free. He was a friend of the people, but he indulged in no enthusiasm for liberty. He never dilated on the beauties of virtue, or complimented, as Cicero did, a Providence in which he did not believe. He was too sincere to stoop to unreality. He held to the facts of this life and to his own convictions; and as he found no reason for supposing that there was a life beyond the grave he did not pretend to expect it. He respected the religion of the Roman state as an institution established by the laws. He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and practises of the uncounted sects or tribes who were gathered under the eagles. But his own writings contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter was on his side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not order Te Deums to be sung for it; and in the absence of these conventionalisms he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have displayed by the freest use of the formulas of pietism. He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in the government of this world; and he succeeded, tho he was murdered for doing it. Strange and startling resemblance between the fate of the founder of the kingdom of this world and of the Founder of the kingdom not of this world for which the first was a preparation. Each was denounced for making himself a king. Each was maligned as the friend of publicans and sinners; each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and cared for; each was put to death; and Caesar also was believed to have risen again and ascended into heaven and become a divine being. JOHN RUSKIN Born in 1819, died in 1900; his father a wealthy wine-merchant in London; educated at Oxford; published the first volume of "Modern Painters" in 1843; made professor at Cambridge in 1858; professor at Oxford in 1869; retired to his estate on Coniston Lake in 1855; published "Lamps of Architecture" in 1849, "Stones of Venice" in 1851-53, followed by a large number of other works, including his "Autobiography" in 1887-88. I OF THE HISTORY AND SOVEREIGNTY OF VENICE[37] Since first the dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all other, have been set upon its sands; the thrones of Tyre, Venice and England. Of the first of these great powers only the memory remains; of the second, the ruin; the third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction. [Footnote 37: From Chapter I of "The Stones of Venice."]