on saving it, imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the "optimates" or "boni"--the leading men of the party--would be true to themselves, Consuls, Censors, and Senate would still suffice to rule the world; but prepared to give and take with those who were opposed to him. It was his idea that political integrity should keep its own hands clean, but should wink at much dirt in the world at large. Nothing, he saw, could be done by Catonic rigor. We can see now that Ciceronic compromises were, and must have been, equally ineffective. The patient was past cure. But in seeking the truth as to Cicero, we have to perceive that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness of his condition, he did hold fast by this idea to the end. The frequent expressions made to Atticus in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the murmurs of his mind at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear that all is gone, and see him tear his hair, and shall yet know that there is a deep fund of hope within his bosom. It was the ingratitude of his political friends, his "boni" and his "optimates," of Pompey as their head, which tried him the sorest; but he was always forgiving them, forgiving Pompey as the head of them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then the political world must be closed to him altogether. Of Cicero's strength or Cicero's weakness Pompey seems to have known nothing. He was no judge of men. Cæsar measured him with a great approach to accuracy. Cæsar knew him to be the best Roman of his day; one who, if he could be brought over to serve in Cæsarean ranks, would be invaluable--because of his honesty, his eloquence, and his capability; but he knew him as one who must be silenced if he were not brought to serve on the Cæsarean side. Such a man, however, might be silenced for a while--taught to perceive that his efforts were vain--and then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use. Personally he was pleasant to Cæsar, who had taste enough to know that he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. But Cæsar was not, I think, quite accurate in his estimation, having allowed himself to believe at the last that Cicero's energy on behalf of the Republic had been quelled. [Sidenote: B.C. 58, ætat. 49.]