The assassination of Caesar, we find characterized in one of his latter works (_Farbenlehre_, Theil 2, p. 126) by Goethe, as '_die abgeschmackteste That die jemals begangen worden_'--_the most outrageously absurd act that ever was committed_. Goethe is right, and more than right. For not only was it an atrocity so absolutely without a purpose as never to have been examined by one single conspirator with a view to its probable tendencies--in that sense therefore it was absurd as pointing to no result--but also in its immediate arrangements and precautions it had been framed so negligently, with a carelessness so total as to the natural rebounds and reflex effects of such a tragic act, that the conspirators had neither organized any resources for improving their act, nor for securing their own persons from the first blind motions of panic, nor even for establishing a common rendezvous. When they had executed their valiant exploit, the very possibility of which from the first step to the last they owed to the sublime magnanimity of their victim--well knowing his own continual danger, but refusing to evade it by any arts of tyranny or distrust--when they had gone through their little scenic mummery of swaggering with their daggers--cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'--they had come to the end of the play. _Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite_. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' We believe that no act so thoroughly womanish, that is, moving under a blind impulse without a thought of consequences, without a concerted succession of steps, and no _arriere pensee_ as to its final improvement, ever yet had a place or rating in the books of Conspiracy, far less was attended (as by accident this was) with an equipage of earth-shattering changes. Even the poor deluded followers of the Old Mountain Assassin, though drugged with bewildering potions, such men as Sir Walter Scott describes in the person of that little wily fanatic gambolling before the tent of Richard _Coeur-de-lion_, had always settled which way they would run when the work was finished. And how peculiarly this reach of foresight was required for these anti-Julian conspirators--will appear from one fact. Is the reader aware, were these boyish men aware, that--besides, what we all know from Shakespeare, a mob won to Caesar's side by his very last codicils of his will; besides a crowd of public magistrates and dependents charged upon the provinces, etc., for two years deep by Caesar's act, though in requital of no services or attachment to himself; besides a distinct Caesarian party; finally, besides Antony, the express representative and assignee of Caesar, armed at this moment with the powers of Consul--there was over and above a great military officer of Caesar's (Lentulus), then by accident in Rome, holding a most potent