with the murder or alienation of their inhabitants, that Cæsar laid the foundations of that immortality, the desire of which seems to have given motion to the designs of his capacious ambition; and roused every nerve to those astonishing exertions which characterize his measures as well in the cabinet as in the field. That he understood and practised the noblest art of conquest, by attacking the generosity of his enemies in preference to their fears. And that, if his ambition was of that kind which some have represented it, a more daring piece of injustice was never directed to more beneficial purposes.

A dauntless resolution, and cunning revenge, says Machiavel, are the most effectual assistants to ambition. How false this position is, we may ourselves conclude, when we see Borgia employing a life of fraud, in an unsuccessful attempt to acquire a petty principality; Julius, by an open liberality of sentiment, and a thorough knowledge of the human heart, rising from the inspection of weights and measures, to wield the sceptre of the world: the career of the former checked by the recoil of his own artifice, and himself protracting his miserable existence in the horrors of a debilitated constitution, and the disappointment of blasted ambition; the latter, nobly sinking in the very theatre of his glory, by the hands of those whom even in death he had the satisfaction of upbraiding with their ingratitude.

Cæsar's is a character, which, though more generally known, has perhaps been less equitably investigated than any other in history. Dazzled with the lustre of his successes, a kind of reverential awe deters us from tracing their progress; or, if we cursorily examine it, we are prejudiced against him by what is imagined his prime motive, the aggrandizement of himself: and conceive, that as he was the first man who established despotism on any

permanent footing in Rome, he must necessarily have been the oppressor of his country. His partisans have lost the vices of his heart, in the greatness of his mind; and his detractors have reduced even the virtues of a generous temper, to the cold prudence of political foresight.

Should I endeavour to examine, whether, in a corrupted commonwealth a man is to be so far actuated by self-preservation, as to make himself first, where to be second is death; and where the contest is, who shall first seize illegal power to the prejudice of the other, whether ambition is justified in bearing an active part; I should approach nearer to a metaphysical, than an historical, disquisition. I shall therefore content myself with taking a short view of the conduct of Julius, when compared with that of Sylla and Augustus. For as all were nearly or precisely in the same situations, as all had equal power, all were exposed to the same temptations, and all had the same plea for the exercise of those cruelties, which the insolence of success, or political jealousy might dictate, the characters may surely be equitably compared; and the merits of each impartially distinguished.

The massacre of the Villa Publica, and the bloody tribunal of Mutina, are incontestible proofs of the savage depravity human nature is capable of, when steeled by the success of illegal ambition, or the avidity of premeditated revenge. But Sylla, it may be answered, was only retaliating on the Marians; and Augustus was gratifying a laudable resentment, when persecuting the murderers of his uncle. Yet Julius had both these instigations; an imitation of Sylla had been the constant threat of Pompey in consequence of a victory; and those who experienced the generosity of Cæsar, were the very assassins who had been instrumental to the murder of his relations. The unfeeling cruelty of Sylla, and the cold satur

nine revenge of Augustus, are proofs of black and depraved hearts, which we no where find in Julius: on the contrary, if we may credit the testimony of Suetonius, and other writers of his history, he seems to have expressed a concern for the alternative he was reduced to on the eve of every important enterprise during his civil wars; and even to have turned with horror and commiseration from the bleeding head of his most inveterate enemy. His apparent severity to the barbarians during his provincial administration, has with some appearance of reason been considered as a stigma on his character; but if we trace this consummate general through his operations in Gaul, if we thoroughly examine the character of the surrounding nations, their ferocity when conquerors, and their perfidy when admitted to equitable terms, we shall immediately acquit him of wanton cruelty; and refer any apparent act of injustice to the necessity he was under of subduing, by violent and arbitrary measures, a people, whose fears were their only ties of fidelity. Their entire subjection was absolutely necessary to the safety of the Romans, whose inmost barrier they surrounded on every side; yet even in this dangerous situation, Cæsar, on every possible occasion, preferred the more gentle method of expostulation and reproof, to those bloody remedies which seem to have been so repugnant to his disposition.

A similar behaviour in the succeeding age of so unimpeached a character as Germanicus, will sufficiently evince the necessity of seasonable acts of violence among barbarians. 'Orabat,' says Tacitus, when describing his conduct in the midst of an engagement, 'insisterent cædibus; solam internecionem gentis finem bello fore.' He entreated them to pursue their slaughter; that the extirpation of the whole race alone would put an end to the war;' plainly proving, by this unusual eagerness for bloodshed in

so humane a conqueror, that it is sometimes necessary to frighten into servitude, those who cannot be enticed into alliance.

From these appearances then, however his boundless ambition may have blinded him to the nicer distinctions of right and wrong, may we conclude, that it was not from a promiscuous effusion of blood, and the undistinguished mass of a million of carcasses, that Cæsar strove to deserve the name of great; and that by whatever excesses it was gained, no man ever made a more temperate use of illegal authority. Nay, even admitting what it is improbable to suppose, that this lenity proceeded not from a disposition naturally merciful, but from a refinement in political artifice, the man whose reason will enable him so far to subject his resentments to his interest, has at least the merit of promoting, with his own, the common interest of mankind.

And here it may not be amiss to examine the tendency of this forgiving principle, which is so peculiarly the offspring of Christianity, that the contrary seems almost to have been a tenet of Heathen morality. For we find those alone among the ancients, whose greatness of mind, or purity of morals, as it were, instinctively dictated to them some of the leading points in the gospel doctrine, to have effected, or even conceived, this philosophic conquest over the passions. Lycurgus, Aristides, Titus, Trajan, and Adrian, are striking instances of this; nor have we any example of the remembrance of an injury voluntarily foregone by a Claudius or a Tiberius. The reason is obvious; the mind of man naturally recoils at an indignity; and it is as much in our natures to seek the gratification of our revenge by the destruction of the offending object, as it is in the adder to wound the heel which treads on it. Unenlightened then, and undirected, how can man so far counteract the operations of his nature, as to

detect the insidious treachery of this passion; and sacrifice what he considers a just resentment, to what the world would name a blamable timidity.

But let it not be imagined that the suppression of a passion so invariably implanted in our nature, will tend at all to apathise the finer feelings of the soul; or that the patient endurance of the primitive Christian, borders on the haughty insensibility of the Stoic. In the very suffering an injury, a great mind feels a conscious satisfaction, in pity for the petulant weakness of the injurer; and in forgiving it, the sublime pleasure which this art of upbraiding an. enemy into a friend, never fails to inspire. Revenge may for a moment çast an illusive gleam over the mind, but is incapable of lulling those reflections its consequences may give rise to; or obtaining that complete triumph over the inclinations of a fallen enemy.

But however this principle might tend to the happiness or aggrandizement of human nature, its superior advantages, without the assistance of revealed religion, would probably have never been thoroughly understood. For though in some instances the practice of it in the Heathen world may seem to stagger this opinion, their most refined philosophy has never ranked it in their catalogue of virtues; or considered it as one of those unalterable dogmas which constitute a wise and good man. In the disputations of the Socratic school, and the philosophic retirement of Tusculum, the subjection of ambition, pleasure, and the other leading passions of the human mind, to the calm and dispassionate direction of wisdom, were discussed with the utmost refinement of wit and knowledge; and still remain the interesting pictures of superior understanding, emerging from the darkness of superstition, and struggling for liberality of sentiment, amidst the disadvantages of Pagan prejudice: while retaliation