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 both from the universal interest of its subject and the wisdom which it contains—whether his own or of the authorities from whom he quotes—has an abiding place among the choicest books of the world. Thus posterity has had as much reason to be glad as he had himself that he "effected a reconciliation with his old friends—his books."

The retirement to Astura, after the bitter sorrow caused by the death of Tullia, was thus not unfruitful. "The passionate unrest," of which he speaks, drove him to literature, but though it pervades the letters it does not monopolize them. They are still full of signs of his interest in affairs, both private and public. He had also conceived the idea of purchasing a site near Rome, some horti in which there might be built a memorial chapel or shrine to commemorate the daughter he had lost. This design does not seem to have been carried out; but its mere conception, with the endless discussions which it involved, seems to have been a consolation to him. Before the letters in this volume come to an end, though he tells Dolabella that "the old cheerfulness and gaiety, in which he took more delight than anybody else, had all been taken from him," yet by the latter part of May he is back again at Tusculum, not appreciably less cheerful, and certainly not less interested in public affairs than before. He is especially eager as to the opinion Varro will express of his Academics, to whom the book is eventually dedicated in a very careful and courteous letter (pp. 304-305).

Another subject of anxiety to Cicero during this period of which we hear a good deal in the latter part of this volume is the settlement of his son. The young man—now just twenty years old—was anxious to join Cæsar's army in Spain. He seems to have been more fitted for the life of a soldier than for anything else: but his father shrank from seeing a son of his fighting against Pompeians even now, and was anxious that he should go to Athens to study rhetoric and philosophy. The young man yielded. But the natural result followed. The academical studies at Athens