Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/30

 the peaceful triumphs of the eloquence which had so long been his study. The flight of years passed over him, alike victorious in the factious strife of the capital, and in the deadly struggle with the Celtic savages of North-western Europe. Ruling long-conquered Spain in peace, and subjugating still barbarous Gaul, he showed the same ascendent genius which made the greatest minds of Rome his willing and despised tools, and crushed them when they at last dreamed of independence or resistance. In the art military, supreme and unconquered, whether met by the desperate savage of the forest or desert, or by the veteran legions of republican Rome,—in the arts of intrigue, more than a match for the subtlest deceivers of a jealous democracy,—as an orator, winning the hearts and turning the thoughts of those who were the hearers of Cicero,—as a writer, unmatched even in that Ciceronian age, for strength and flowing ease, though writing in a camp, amid the fatigues of a savage warfare,—in all the accomplishments that adorn and soften, and in all the manly exercises that ennoble and strengthen, alike complete,—in battle, in storm, on the ocean and on land, in the collected fury of the charge, and the sudden shock of the surprise, always dauntless and cool, showing a courage never shaken, though so often tried,—to his friends kind and generous,—to his vanquished foes, without exception, merciful and forgiving,—beloved by the former, respected by the latter, and adored by the people,—a scholar, an astronomer, a poet, a wit, a gallant, an orator, a statesman, a warrior, a governor, a monarch,—his vast and various attainments, so wonderful in that wonderful age, have secured to him, from the great of his own and all following ayes, the undeniable name of. Such a man was CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR. He saved the people from themselves; he freed them from their own tyranny, and ended forever, in Rome, the power of the populace to meddle with the disposal of the great interests of the consolidated nations of the empire. It was necessary that it should be so. The empire was too vast for an ignorant and stupid democracy to govern. The safety and comfort of the world required a better rule; and never was any man, in the course of Providence, more wonderfully prepared as the instrument of a mighty work, than was Julius Caesar, as the founder of a power which was to last till the fall of Rome. For the accomplishment of this wonderful purpose, every one of his countless excellences seems to have done something; and no