contrary] preserved. Thus Socrates became perfect, improving himself by every thing; attending to nothing but Reason. And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought however to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates.

MARCUS AURELIUS

(A. D. 121-180.)

"It is more delightful,' says the great historian Niebuhr, 'to speak of Marcus Aurelius than of any man in history; for if there is any sublime human virtue it is his. He was certainly the noblest character of his time, and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility, with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself. We possess innumerable busts of him, for every Roman of his time was anxious to possess his portrait, and if there is anywhere an expression of virtue it is in the heavenly features of Marcus Aurelius.'

"Marcus Aurelius was born on April 26, a. D. 121. His more correct designation would be Marcus Antoninus, but since he bore several different names at different periods of his life, and since at that age nothing was more common than a change of designation, it is hardly worth while to alter the name by which he is most popularly recognized. His father, Annius Verus, who died in his Prætorship, drew his blood from a line of illustrious men who claimed descent from Numa, the second King of Rome. His mother, Domitia Calvilla, was also a lady of consular and kingly race. The character of both seems to have been worthy of their high dignity. Of his father he can have known little, since Annius died when Aurelius was a mere infant. . . . The childhood and boyhood of Aurelius fell during the reign of Hadrian. Hadrian, though an able, indefatigable, and, on the whole, beneficial emperor, was a man whose character was stained with serious faults. It is, however, greatly to his honour that he recognized in Aurelius, at the early age of six years, the germs of those extraordinary virtues which afterwards blessed the empire and elevated the sentiments of mankind. . . . Towards the end of his long reign, worn out with disease and weariness, Hadrian, being childless, had

adopted as his son L. Ceionius Commodus, a man who had few recommendations but his personal beauty. Upon his [Ceionius's] death, which took place a year afterwards, Hadrian, assembling the senators round his sick bed, adopted and presented to them as their future emperor Arrius Antoninus, better known by the surname of Pius, which he won by his gratitude to the memory of his predecessor. Had Aurelius been older - he was then but seventeen it is known that Hadrian would have chosen him, and not Antoninus, for his heir. The latter, indeed, who was then fifty-two years old, was only selected on the express condition that he should in turn adopt both Marcus Aurelius and the son of the deceased Ceionius. Thus, at the age of seventeen, Aurelius, who, even from his infancy, had been loaded with conspicuous distinctions, saw himself the acknowledged heir to the Empire of the world. . . . On the death of Hadrian in A. D. 138, Antoninus Pius succeeded to the throne, and, in accordance with the late emperor's conditions, adopted Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Commodus. . . . The long reign of Antoninus Pius is one of those happy periods that have no history." It was ended in A. D. 161 by his death.

He

Marcus Aurelius then came to the throne, in association with his adoptive brother. The latter died in 169. "Marcus was now the undisputed lord of the Roman world. was seated on the dizziest and most splendid eminence which it was possible for human grandeur to obtain. But this imperial elevation kindled no glow of pride or self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened nature. He regarded himself

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as being in fact the servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the bull in the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront every peril in his own person, to be foremost in all the hardships of war and most deeply immersed in all the toils of peace. His Meditations' were written amid the painful self-denial and distracting anxieties of his wars with the Quadi and the Marcomanni, and he was the author of other works, which unhappily have perished." He died in Pannonia on the 17th of March, A. D. 180. — F. w. FARRAR, "Seekers after God."

"The reading of Marcus Aurelius strengthens, but it does not console: it leaves a void in the soul which is at once cruel and delightful, which one would not exchange for full

satisfaction. Humility, renunciation, severity towards self, were never carried further. Glory that last illusion of great souls — is reduced to nothingness. It is needful to do right without disturbing one's self as to whether any one knows that we do it. . . . The consequences of this austere philosophy might have been hardness and obstinacy. It is here that the rare goodness of Marcus Aurelius shines out in its full brilliancy. His severity is only for himself. The fruit of his great tension of soul is an infinite benevolence. All his life was a study of how to return good for evil. One moment, thanks to him, the world was governed by the best and greatest man of his age. Frightful decadences followed; but the little casket which contained the 'Thoughts' on the banks of the Granicus was saved. From it came forth that incomparable book in which Epictetus was surpassed. Veritable, eternal Evangel, the book of Thoughts' which will never grow old, because it asserts no dogma. ERNEST RENAN, "Marcus Aurelius" ("English Conferences," trans. by Clara Erskine Clement).

SELECTIONS FROM THE THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS.

(Translated by George Long.)

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good, that it is beautiful, and of the bad, that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the

upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.

Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man, to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice; and to give thyself relief from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods; for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who observes these things.

This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders thee from always doing and saying the things which are according to the nature of which thou art a part.

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the For the present is the same to all.

same.

Labor not unwillingly, nor without regard to the common interest, nor without due consideration, nor with distraction; nor let studied ornament set off thy thoughts, and be not either a man of many words, or busy about too many things.

If thou findest in human life anything better than