Critics have uniformly admired Cicero’s style as peculiarly suited to the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more redundancy than the Greek.  The simplicity of the Attic writers would make Latin composition bald and tame.  To be perspicuous, the Latin must be full.  Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost in elegance and perspicuity.  But Cicero, dealing with a barren and unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus became the greatest master of composition the world has seen.  He was a great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment.  Thus he was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the times.  The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs; nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws.  It is in his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks.  In his speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence of tyranny and corruption.  Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.

Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious examples, never even equalled.  Still, we cannot tell the comparative merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them.  In power of moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame when read.

In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even than in poetry, or history, or eloquence.  Their speculations pertained to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man.  But this great department has already been presented.  There were respectable writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great names whose writings have descended to us.  Contemporaries had an exalted opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as well as their most voluminous author.  He was born ten years before Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine.  He was entirely devoted to literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old age.  Saint Augustine says of him that “he wrote so much that one wonders how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he found time to write.”  He composed four hundred and ninety books.  Of these only one has descended to us entire,—­“De Re Rustica,” written at the age of eighty; but