to be created. You grew weary of Decemvirs. We compelled them to abdicate. You insisted on the restoration of the Tribuneship. We yielded. You invaded our rights. We have borne and still bear. What termination is there to be to these dissensions? When shall we have a united city? When one common country? With the enemy at our gates, with the Volscian foe scaling your rampart, there is no one to hinder it. But against us you are valiant, against us you diligently take up arms. Come on, then. Besiege the Senate-house. Make a camp of the Forum. Fill the jails with our chief nobles. Then sally out with the same determined spirit against the enemy. Does your resolution fail? Look, then, to see your lands ravaged, your houses plundered and in flames, the whole country laid waste with fire and sword.

Extinguish, O Romans, these fatal divisions! Break the spell of this enchantment, which renders you powerless and inactive! If you will but summon up the ancient Roman courage, and follow your Consuls to the field, I will submit to any punishment, if I do not rout and put to flight these ravagers of our territories, and transfer to their own cities the terror of war.

INVECTIVE AGAINST CATILINE CICERO.

How far, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience? How long shalt thou baffle justice in thy mad career? To what extreme wilt thou carry thy audacity? Art thou nothing daunted by the nightly watch, posted to secure the Palatium? Nothing, by

the city guards? Nothing, by the rally of all good citizens? Nothing, by the assembling of the Senate in this fortified place? Nothing, by the averted looks of all here present? Seest thou not that all thy plots are exposed?--that thy wretched conspiracy is laid bare to every man's knowledge here in the Senate?—that we are well aware of thy proceedings of last night, of the night before: the place of meeting, the company convoked, the measures concerted? Alas, the times! Alas, the public morals! The Senate understands all this. The Consul sees it. Yet the traitor lives! Lives? Ay, truly, and confronts us here in council, takes part in our deliberations, and, with his measuring eye, marks out each man of us for slaughter. And we, all this while, strenuous that we are, think we have amply discharged our duty to the State, if we but shun this madman's sword and fury.

Long since, O Catiline, cught the Consul to have ordered thee to execution, and brought upon thy own head the ruin thou hast been meditating against others. There was that virtue once in Rome, that a wicked citizen was held more execrable than the deadliest foe. We have a law still, Catiline, for thee. Think not that we are powerless, because forbearing. We have a decree, though it rests among our archives like a sword in its scabbard,—a decree, by which thy life would be made to pay the forfeit of thy crimes. And, should I order thee to be instantly seized and put to death, I make just doubt whether all good men would not think it done rather too late than any man too cruelly. But, for good reasons, I will yet defer the blow long since de

served. Then will I doom thee, when no man is found so lost, so wicked, nay, so like thyself, but shall confess that it was justly dealt. While there is one man that dares defend thee, live! But thou shalt live so beset, so surrounded, so scrutinized, by the vigilant guards that I have placed around thee, that thou shalt not stir a foot against the Republic without my knowledge. There shall be eyes to detect thy slightest movement, and ears to catch thy wariest whisper, of which thou shalt not dream. The darkness of night shall not cover thy treason; the walls of privacy shall not stifle its voice. Baffled on all sides, thy most secret counsels clear as noon-day, what canst thou now have in view? Proceed, plot, conspire, as thou wilt; there is nothing you can contrive, nothing you can propose, nothing you can attempt, which I shall not know, hear, and promptly understand. Thou shalt soon be made aware that I am even more active in providing for the preservation of the State than thou in plotting its destruction.

CATILINE EXPELLED CICERO.

At length, Romans, we are rid of Catiline. We have driven him forth, drunk with fury, breathing mischief, threatening to revisit us with fire and sword. He is gone; he is fled; he has escaped; he has broken away. No longer, within the very walls of the city, shall he plot her ruin. We have forced him from secret plots into open rebellion. The bad citizen is now the avowed traitor. His flight is the confession of his treason. Would that his attendants

had not been so few! Be speedy, ye companions of his dissolute pleasures; be speedy, and you may overtake him before night on the Aurelian road. Let him not languish deprived of your society. Haste to join the congenial crew that compose his army, -his army, I say; for who doubts that the army under Manlius expect Catiline for their leader? And such an army! Outcasts from honor, and fugitives from debt; gamblers and felons; miscreants, whose dreams are of rapine, murder, and conflagration!

Against these gallant troops of your adversary, prepare, O Romans, your garrisons and armies; and first to that maimed and battered gladiator oppose your consuls and generals; next, against that miserable outcast horde, lead forth the strength and flower of all Italy. On the one side chastity contends; on the other, wantonness: here purity, there pollution; here integrity, there treachery; here piety, there profaneness; here constancy, there rage; here honesty, there baseness; here continence, there lust; in short, equity, temperance, fortitude, prudence, struggle with iniquity, luxury, cowardice, rashness; every virtue with every vice; and, lastly, the contest lies between well-grounded hope and absolute despair. In such a conflict, were even human aid to fail, would not the immortal gods empower such conspicuous virtue to triumph over such complicated vice?

DENUNCIATION OF VERRES-CICERO.

I ask now, Verres, what have you to advance against these charges? Art thou not the tyrant

prætor, who at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, dared to put to an infamous death on the cross that ill-fated and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus? And what was his offence? He had declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against your brutal persecutions. For this, when about to embark for home, he was seized, brought before you, charged with being a spy, scourged and tortured. In vain did he exclaim: "I am a Roman citizen! I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and who will attest my innocence!" Deaf to all remonstrance, remorseless, thirsting for innocent blood, you ordered the savage punishment to be inflicted. While the sacred words, "I am a Roman citizen," were on his lips-words which in the remotest regions are a passport to protection,-you ordered him to death, to a death upon the cross.

O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship, once sacred, now trampled on! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Roman Commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country restrain the merciless monster, who, in the confidence of his riches, strikes at the very root of liberty and sets mankind at defiance? And shall this man escape? Fathers, it must not be! It must not be, unless you would