Caesar was monarch; but he was never seized with the giddiness of the tyrant.

He is perhaps the only one among the mighty ones of the earth, who in great matters and little never acted according to inclination or caprice, but always without exception according to his duty as ruler, and who, when he looked back on his life, found doubtless erroneous calculations to deplore, but no false step of passion to regret.

There is nothing in the history of Caesar's life, which even on a small scale( 2) can be compared with those poetico-sensual ebullitions--such as the murder of Kleitos or the burning of Persepolis--which the history of his great predecessor in the east records.

He is, in fine, perhaps the only one of those mighty ones, who has preserved to the end of his career the statesman's tact of discriminating between the possible and the impossible, and has not broken down in the task which for greatly gifted natures is the most difficult of all-- the task of recognizing, when on the pinnacle of success, its natural limits.

What was possible he performed, and never left the possible good undone for the sake of the impossible better, never disdained at least to mitigate by palliatives evils that were incurable.