is not, like the work of Washington or of Cavour or of Bismarck, an achievement to glory in.
It is not without regret that we contemplate this lame and impotent conclusion to the life-long toil of a great man. Cæsar was unsurpassed as a soldier, as a scholar, as a gentleman, as a leader and manager of men; in him the saying of Cervantes finds its fullest realisation, that "the lance has not dulled the pen, nor the pen the lance." But after all the tree is known by its fruit, and Cæsarism is condemned by the character which the despotism necessarily stamped upon the generations bred under it. We must look for its perfect work in the subjects of the later Empire, ground down by an intolerable burden of taxation, with souls which had lost all nobler political interests, trusting to hired soldiers to fight for them, no longer capable of managing their own concerns nor of striking a blow in defence of their own hearths. All the horrors of the barbarian invasion and all the darkness of the Middle Ages were not a price too heavy to pay for the infusion of fresher and stronger blood, and the revival of the sense of dignity in mankind.
Such was the path in which Cæsar willed that the world should walk. The other alternative before him was to undertake a complicated and difficult task, requiring the highest constructive statesmanship. The Italian people was still sound at heart; Italy still loved liberty and hated despotism; her sons could still endure with patience, and dare with energy, and die with heroism around the eagles. When a people displays such qualities, a statesman need not despair of organising it into a free nation.
