]
at the very least, as we resolutely maintain after reviewing all that has
been written on that much vexed theme, and very probably half as many
more. Republican Rome had her _prerogative_ tribe; the earth has its
_prerogative_ city; and that city was Rome.
As was the city, such was its prince--mysterious, solitary, unique. Each
was to the other an adequate counterpart, each reciprocally that perfect
mirror which reflected, as it were _in alia materia,_ those incommunicable
attributes of grandeur, that under the same shape and denomination never
upon this earth were destined to be revived. Rome has not been repeated;
neither has Caesar. _Ubi Caesar, ibi Roma_--was a maxim of Roman
jurisprudence. And the same maxim may be translated into a wider meaning;
in which it becomes true also for our historical experience. Caesar and
Rome have flourished and expired together. The illimitable attributes of
the Roman prince, boundless and comprehensive as the universal air,--like
that also bright and apprehensible to the most vagrant eye, yet in parts
(and those not far removed) unfathomable as outer darkness, (for no
chamber in a dungeon could shroud in more impenetrable concealment a deed
of murder than the upper chambers of the air,)--these attributes, so
impressive to the imagination, and which all the subtlety of the Roman
[Footnote: Or even of modern wit; witness the vain attempt of so many
eminent sort, and illustrious _Antecessors_, to explain in self-
consistency the differing functions of the Roman Caesar, and in what sense
he was _legibus solutus_.
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