one can now reach the highest rank"--namely, the Senate--"except by the votes of the people, all power of selecting having been taken away from the Censors."[89] In his pleadings for P. Sextus he makes the same boast as to old times, not with absolute accuracy, as far as we can understand the old constitution, but with the same passionate ardor as to the body. "Romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings, created annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the Council of the Senate was set over the Republic for its guidance. Senators were chosen for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to that order was opened to the virtue and to the industry of the citizens at large."[90] When defending Cluentius, he expatiates on the glorious privileges of the Roman Senate. "Its high place, its authority, its splendor at home, its name and fame abroad, the purple robe, the ivory chair, the appanage of office, the fasces, the army with its command, the government of the provinces!"[91] On that splendor "apud exteras gentes," he expatiates in one of his attacks upon Verres.[92] From all this will be seen Cicero's idea of the chamber into which he had made his way as soon as he had been chosen Quæstor. In this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life turned--the character, namely, of the Roman Senate--it cannot but be observed that he was wont to blow both hot and cold. It was his nature to do so, not from any aptitude for deceit, but because he was sanguine and vacillating--because he now aspired and now despaired. He blew hot and cold in regard to the Senate, because at times he would feel it to be what it was--composed, for the most part, of men who were time-serving and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price to any buyer; and then, again, at times he would think of the Senate as endowed with all those privileges which he names, and would dream that under his influence it would become what it should be--such a Senate as he believed it to have been in its old palmy days. His praise of the Senate, his description of what it should be and might be, I have given. To the other side of the picture we shall come soon, when I shall have to show how, at the trial of Verres, he declared before the judges themselves how terrible had been the corruption of the judgment-seat in Rome since, by Sulla's enactment, it had been occupied only by the Senators. One passage I will give now, in order that the reader may see by the juxtaposition of the words that he could denounce the Senate as loudly as he would vaunt its privileges. In the column on the left hand in the note I quote the words with which, in the first pleading against Verres, he declared "that every base and iniquitous thing done on the judgment-seat during the ten years since the power of judging had been transferred to the Senate should be not only denounced by him, but also proved;" and in that on the right I will repeat the noble phrases which