The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-15 00:00:00

CICERO'S LETTERS.

It is a rich mine of information, and furnishes the best
materials, not only for his own biography, but a great part
of the history of the time. Nowhere else do we find such a
vivid picture of contemporary events. Wo seem to be pre-
sent at the shifting scenes of the drama, as the plot unfolds
itself which involves the destinies of Rome. We hear
the groans of the expiring Republic, which has been
mortally wounded during the long civil wars of Marius
and Sylla, and was fast sinking under the flood of social
and political corruption which is sure to follow in
the train of civil war. At one time they watch with
eager impatience the arrival of a courier at Tusculum. with
a letter from Atticus telling his friends the news of the
day, and in Cicero's reply we read all the fluctuations of
hope and fear which agitated him during the momentous
crisis of his country's fate. At another we contemplate the
great orator and statesman in the seclusion of his villa, as a
plain country gentleman, busying himself with improve..
ments on his estate, building farm-houses, laying out and
planting shrubberies, and turning watercourses, or amusing
himself with pictures and statues, and the various objects
which interest a man of refined and cultivated taste. At
another we find him at Rome sick, weary, and disgusted with
the din of strife, mistrusting everybody where no one seems
worthy of trust, and harping ever on the vanity and ambition '
and the worthlessness of popular applause. We see him
at one moment exalted to the summit of human glory when
saluted in the Senate by the proud title of Pater Patria, and
at another sunk in the lowest depths of despair when he is
a wandering fugitive exile from Rome, and tells his wife
that while he writes he is blinded by his tears,
There is a charm in these letters to whichwe have nothing
comparable in all that antiquity has spared us. To say no-
thing of their exquisite Latinity, and not unfrequently their
play of wit, they have a freshness and reality which no nar-
rative of bygone events can ever hope to attain. We see in
them Cicero as he was. We behold him in his strength and
in his weakness—the bold advocate, and yet timid vacillating
statesman—the fond husband—the affectionate father—the
kind master—the warm-hearted friend. I speak not now of
his political correspondence, written with an object in view,
and with a consciousness that it might one day be made
public, but his private letters to his relatives and friends, in
which he poured out the whole secret of his soul, and laid
bare his innermost thoughts, yearning for sympathy and
clinging for support. To quote the words of De Quinor-•
" In them we come suddenly into deep lulls of angry pas-
sion—here upon a scheme for the extension of literature by
a domestic *history, or by a comparison of Greek with Ro-
man jurisprudence; there again upon some ancient problem
from the quiet fields of philosophy." They show that he
was a man of genial soul, and of a meet kind and amiable
disposition—what Dr. Johnson would have called a tho-
roughly " clubable" person. He is never more at home than
whenindulging in a little pleasant banter and irony, as when
he makes fun of Trebatius the lawyer, who had left the atmo-
sphere of the courts, to turn soldier and serve under Cesar
in Gaul. But he is always the scholar and the gentleman ;
and no one had more of that refined polish which the Ro-
mans described by the expressive word urbarfitt4B. Ido not
think that in the whole of his correspondence a single coarse
word or vulgar idea occurs. It is not so in his speeches.
There he often indulged in language which is, according to
modern notions, offensive to good taste and decency, as
when he attacked Piso and Gubinius and Antony. But
that was the fault of the plain- speaking time in which he
lived, rather than of the man; just as the occasional coarse-
ness of Shakspore must be attributed to the age in which
he was born, and not to his own gentle nature.

How pleasant it is to hear him giving his friend Atticus a
message from the little Tullia, or Tulliola as he often calls
her—making use of the endearing diminutive so significant
in the ancient Latin and modern Italian—to remind him of
his promise to make her a present, and afterwards telling
him that:Tullia had brought an action against him for breach
of contract ; or to find him speakircg of his only son " the
honey sweet Cicero," that " most aristocratic child," as ho
playfully styl N 3 him, who was with his sister in his youth-
ful days the pride and delight of his life. We see him
lounging on the shore at his villa near Antinnr, and there
penning a letter to confess that he is in no humour to work,
and.amuses himself with counting the waves as they roll
upon the beach. We would not willingly exchange that
letter to Atticus, in which he says of himself that he knows
he has acted like a " genuine donkey" (me asinum ger-
manum fuisse), for the stiffest and most elaborate of his
political epistles.---ForsytlesLtie of Gloom

A STATUE TO BERNARD PALISSY is proposed to
be erected at Saintes, his birthplace.
A STATUE OF SIGNOR ROSSINI, by Signor Maro-
chetti, which has been presented to his native town of
Pesaro by the Marquis of Salamanca and M. Delahante,
will bo shortly inaugurated there,
BULWER'S " CAXTONIANA" form v 015.692 and 693
of the Tauchnitz Collection.
MISS NIGHTINGALE still remains in town, With-
out any perceptible change in her health.
A LIFE OF FLAXMAN, THE GREAT SCULPTOR.--
Mr. G. F. Terriswood is engaged in collecting materials for
a Life of Flagman, the great sculptor.
THE SCOTCH LUNACY CASE: caw of Mr.
.
Angus Macintosh, who brought an action against
the proprietors of the Saughton Lunaticv Awheyenumhe.
near Edinburgh, for illegally detaining
hien thekCida last
was of sound mind, was brought to
geb the r -
We gave the evidence of the alleged
days ago. On Friday, the jury,
BfteraaCeltfority oyf nine eto
siding judge, returned a verdict, al
ueni Globe
iarc" himselfya
few,
m. he counsel
causes, infavour
seption to the principles of law
for Mr. Macintosh took ea
three, which it will be recollectedbyis allowed in Scotch
laid down.
btile pofresthiclino keeper
giud of the asylu T.