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 "noble lords," as Mr Froude delights, with questionable taste, to call them, are by no means imaginary persons. Yet, as we follow the course of the eloquent impeachment, the impression gradually produced upon our mind resembles that described by a listener who was present in Westminster Hall when a master of invective not inferior to Cicero denounced the man who, in a distant province of our Empire, had abused responsibilities vaster than those committed to Verres. The vigour, the imagination, the fire of Burke's opening narrative enchained the audience, but when he passed from narrative to comment,—when the charges of rapacity, cruelty, tyranny were reiterated in general terms,—his declamatory vehemence broke the spell. Mr Froude's statement of the case against the Roman Senate has a similar effect upon us. He first elicits the damning eloquence of facts, and then overlays it with the rhetoric of denunciation.

It is evident that two distinct questions are involved in Mr Froude's statement of the political situation in the last years of the Roman Republic. The first question is: Was the maintenance of the Constitution essentially incompatible with the imperial position which Rome had acquired by foreign conquest? The second question is: Were the actual circumstances of the Constitution so desperate that there was nothing left for Cæsar to do but "to found the military monarchy," or, in other words, to make himself absolute?

The change made in the position of Rome by