merit of the highest quality,) and in no instance was this felicity more
conspicuous than in the first act of his entrance upon the political
scene. No doubt his friends and enemies alike thought of him, at the
moment of Caesar's assassination, as we now think of a young man heir-elect
to some person of immense wealth, cut off by a sudden death before he has
had time to ratify a will in execution of his purposes. Yet in fact the
case was far otherwise. Brought forward distinctly as the successor of
Caesar's power, had he even, by some favorable accident of absence from
Rome, or otherwise, escaped being involved in that great man's fate, he
would at all events have been thrown upon the instant necessity of
defending his supreme station by arms. To have left it unasserted, when
once solemnly created in his favor by a reversionary title, would have
been deliberately to resign it. This would have been a confession of
weakness liable to no disguise, and ruinous to any subsequent pretensions.
Yet, without preparation of means, with no development of resources nor
growth of circumstances, an appeal to arms would, in his case, have been
of very doubtful issue. His true weapons, for a long period, were the arts
of vigilance and dissimulation. Cultivating these, he was enabled to
prepare for a contest which, undertaken prematurely, must have ruined him,
and to raise himself to a station of even military pre-eminence to those
who naturally, and by circumstances, were originally every way superior to
himself.

The qualities in which he really excelled, the gifts of intrigue,
patience, long-suffering, dissimulation, and tortuous fraud, were thus
brought into play, and allowed their full value. Such qualities had every
chance of prevailing in the long run, against the noble carelessness and
the impetuosity of the passionate Anthony--and they _did_ prevail.
Always on the watch to lay hold of those opportunities which the generous
negligence of his rival was but too frequently throwing in his way--unless