sword and lance. The campaign on which Cæsar was about to enter was fought with spade and pick and axe and hatchet. Corps of engineers he may have had; but if the engineers designed the work, the execution lay with the army, . . . How the legionaries acquired these various arts, whether the Italian peasantry were generally educated in such occupations, or whether on this occasion there was a special selection of the best, of this we have no information. Certain only it was that men and instruments were as excellent in their kind as honesty and skill could make them; and however degenerate the patricians and corrupt the legislature, there was sound stuff somewhere in the Roman Constitution."
A sign, we would venture to remind Mr Froude, that there was one department, at all events, in which the Senate had not been such an utter failure—the administration of the army; and also that the Constitution, sick as it might be, was perhaps not so very sick that there was nothing left for it but to receive the coup de grâce. Mr Froude's power of description finds admirable scope in many of the striking scenes which the campaigns present. We would instance as good examples—and there are many others hardly inferior—Cæsar's battle with the Nervii (p. 221), the battle of Pharsalia (p. 389), Cæsar's repression of the mutiny in the Tenth Legion (p. 415), and the occasion in the African campaign when he dismissed five of his officers for misconduct, after addressing them severally before the assembled tribunes and centurions (p. 422). In these and similar cases, Mr Froude has preserved much of the rapid brevity of the Commentaries, while he has skilfully added such dramatic touches
