survives--that of all the distinctions created in his favor, either by the
senate or the people, he put most value upon the laurel crown which was
voted to him after his last campaigns--a beautiful and conspicuous
memorial to every eye of his great public acts, and at the same time an
overshadowing veil of his one sole personal defect. This laurel diadem at
once proclaimed his civic grandeur, and concealed his baldness, a defect
which was more mortifying to a Roman than it would be to ourselves, from
the peculiar theory which then prevailed as to its probable origin. A
gratitude of the same mixed quality must naturally have been felt by the
Second Caesar for his title of _Augustus_, which, whilst it illustrated his
public character by the highest expression of majesty, set apart and
sequestrated to public functions, had also the agreeable effect of
withdrawing from the general remembrance his obscure descent. For the
Octavian house [_gens_] had in neither of its branches risen to any great
splendor of civic distinction, and in his own, to little or none. The same
titular decoration, therefore, so offensive to the celebrated Whig, was,
in the eyes of Augustus, at once a trophy of public merit, a monument of
public gratitude, and an effectual obliteration of his own natal
obscurity.

But, if merely odious to men of Sir William's principles, to others the
character of Augustus, in relation to the circumstances which surrounded
him, was not without its appropriate interest. He was summoned in early
youth, and without warning, to face a crisis of tremendous hazard, being
at the same time himself a man of no very great constitutional courage;
perhaps he was even a coward. And this we say without meaning to adopt as
gospel truths all the party reproaches of Anthony. Certainly he was
utterly unfurnished by nature with those endowments which seemed to be
indispensable in a successor to the power of the great Dictator. But
exactly in these deficiencies, and in certain accidents unfavorable to his