A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. But if not for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the purpose of biography. With a view to the understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough. From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations, have been made visible. We know how human he was, and how, too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die. But I wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference to his strength. If they are singularly transparent as to the man--opening, especially to Atticus, the doors of his soul more completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when writing to her bosom friend--they must be taken as being more honestly true. To regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all--as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile--I think it might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. On losing his Tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would not maunder out his sorrows. Even with our truest love for our friends, some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. Whether this be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so. Cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such fear. He said everything that there was within him--being in this, I should say, quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to ourselves. In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty letters--not from Cicero--written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus Brutus, by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none, indeed, from Atticus--none written under terms of such easy friendship