ERE a man's worth ascertainable like the value of a bell, by the loudness of the noise he makes, or has made in the world, there would be few who could compete for the favours of posterity with this famous Roman. At this moment his writings have a higher value in our universities, than is accorded to that glorious mass of Hebrew and Greek literature, THE BIBLE, In the highest courts and assemblies of the land, a quotation from St. Paul is of less weight than an apropos sentence from the works of Cicero: and though too frequent a reference to the classic page may expose the speaker to the charge of pedantry, it needs but a single reference to the sayings of the apostle to justify a suspicion of hypocrisy or fanaticism. But not for ever will the propriety of such a standard of worth be acknowledged by the nations. For us the wisdom of Cicero is becoming daily less needful: our life-voyage is made in a different sea, and no Roman chart or commander's log-book can afford us any aid in the navigation. As travellers with a common object in view, it may not, however, be uninteresting to ascertain whether Cicero's venture of opportunity and talent came safe to port, and was turned to good account, or was wrecked on the way and swallowed up fruitlessly.

He was born at Arpinum in Italy, B. C. 106. His father was a man of small fortune, and it was from him probably, that his son with a larger capacity for good and evil, inherited a love of political strife. At this period the corruption of manners in Rome had entirely extinguished the feeble patriotism which had survived the first excesses consequent upon the attainment of almost universal dominion. The character of the rule was of less importance than the person and the party of the ruler. Impunity for the practice of every vice rewarded the efforts of the successful leader of a faction; and banishment and death were the doom, not so much awarded for the commission of crimes of which all were really equally guilty, as for that deeper guilt, the sin of failure. The early days of Cicero gave promise of a love of virtue. His education had been carefully attended to in the household of Scævola the auger, under whose auspices he studied the philosophy of the Greeks, and the principles and practice of Roman jurisprudence. At the age (17) when the law required him to enter the military profession, a duty from which there was no possibility of escaping, he joined the forces of Pompeius Strabo, the father of the celebrated Pompey, and was present at the capture by Sylla of the Samnite camp. His well known dislike to danger forbids the idea that any portion of this success was owing to his own exertions: and the breaking out of the civil war between Marcus and Sylla soon afterwards, appears to have increased his aversion to