lating with him on his aberrations in this respect, he replied that "wife" was a designation of rank and official dignity, not of tenderness and affection, or implying any claim of love on either side; upon which distinction he begged that she would mind her own affairs, and leave him to pursue such as he might himself be involved in by his sensibility to female charms.

However, he and all his errors, his "regal beauty," his princely pomps, and his authorized hopes, were suddenly swallowed up by the inexorable grave; and he would have passed away like an exhalation, and leaving no remembrance of himself more durable than his own beds of rose leaves, and his reticulated canopies of lilies, had it not been that Hadrian filled the world with images of his perfect faunlike beauty in the shape of colossal statues, and raised temples even to his memory in various cities. This Cæsar, therefore, dying thus prematurely, never tasted of empire; and his name would have had but a doubtful title to a place in the Imperatorial roll, had it not been recalled to a second chance for the sacred-honours in the person of his son-whom it was the pleasure of Hadrian, by way of testifying his affection for the father, to associate in the order of succession with the philosophic Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. This fact, and the certainty that to the second Ælius Verus he gave his own daughter in marriage, rather than to his associate Cæsar Marcus Aurelius, make it evident that his regret for the elder Verus was unaffected and deep; and they overthrow effectually the common report of historians-that he repent ed of his earliest choice, as of one that had been disappointed not by the decrees of fate, but by the vio lent defect of merits in its object. On the contrary, he prefaced his in auguration of this junior Cæsar by the following tender words-Let us confound the rapine of the grave, and let the empire possess amongst her rulers a second Ælius Verus.

"Diis aliter visum est:" the blood of the Elian family was not privileged to ascend or aspire: it gravitated violently to extinction; and this junior Verus is supposed to have been as much indebted to his asses

sor on the throne for shielding his obscure vices, and drawing over his defects the ample draperies of the Imperatorial robe, as he was to Hadrian, his grandfather by fiction of law, for his adoption into the reigning family, and his consecration as one of the Caesars. He, says one historian, shed no ray of light or illustration upon the Imperial house, except by one solitary quality. This bears a harsh sound; but it has the effect of a sudden redemption for his memory, when we learn-that this solitary quality, in virtue of which he claimed a natural affinity to the sacred house, and challenged a natural interest in the purple, was the very princely one of a merciful disposition.

The two Antonines fix an era in the Imperial history; for they were both eminent models of wise and good rulers; and some would say that they fixed a crisis; for with their successor commenced, in the popular be lief, the decline of the empire. Thatat least is the doctrine of Gibbon ; but perhaps it would not be found altogether able to sustain itself against a closer and philosophic examination of the true elements involved in the idea of declension as applied to political bodies. Be that as it may, however, and waiving any interest which might happen to invest the Antonines as the last princes who kept up the empire to its original level, both of them had enough of merit to challenge a separate notice in their personal characters, and apart from the accidents of their position.

The elder of the two, who is usually distinguished by the title of Pius, is thus described by one of his biographers:-" He was exter. nally of remarkable beauty; eminent for his moral character, full of be nign dispositions, noble, with a countenance of a most gentle expression, intellectually of singular endow ments, possessing an elegant style of eloquence, distinguished for his literature, generally temperate, an earnest lover of agricultural pursuits, mild in his deportment, bountiful in the use of his own, but a stern respecter of the rights of others; and, finally, he was all this without ostentation, and with a constant regard to demands of time and place.” His the proportions of cases, and to the

bounty displayed itself in a way, which may be worth mentioning, as at once illustrating the age, and the prudence with which he controlled the most generous of his impulses: “Fanus trientarium," says the historian, "hoc est minimis usuris exercuit, ut patrimonio suo plurimos adjuvaret." The meaning of which is this:-in Rome, the customary interest for money was what was called centesimæ usura; that is, the hundredth part, or 1 per cent. But, as this expressed not the annual, but the monthly interest, the true rate was, in fact, 12 per cent; and that is the meaning of centesima usura. Nor could money be obtained any where on better terms than these; and, moreover, this 1 per cent was exacted rigorously as the monthly day came round, no arrears being suffered to lie over. Under these circumstances, it was a prodigious service to lend money at a diminished rate, and one which furnished many men with the means of saving themselves from ruin. Pius then, by way of extending his aid as far as possible, reduced the monthly rate of his loans to one-third per cent, which made the annual interest the very moderate one of 4 per cent. The channels, which public spirit had as yet opened to the beneficence of the opulent, were few indeed: charity and munificence languished, or they were abused, or they were inefficiently directed, simply through defects in the structure of society. Social organisation, for its large developement, demanded the agency of newspapers (together with many other forms of assistance from the press), of banks, of public carriages on an extensive scale, besides infi nite other inventions or establishments not yet created-which support and powerfully react upon that same progress of society which originally gave birth to themselves. All things considered, in the Rome of that day, where all munificence confined itself to the direct largesses of a few leading necessaries of life, -a great step was taken, and the best step, in this lending of money at a low interest, towards a more refined and beneficial mode of charity.

In his public character, he was perhaps the most patriotic of Roman

Emperors, and the purest from all taint of corrupt or indirect ends. Peculation, embezzlement, or misapplication of the public funds, were universally corrected: provincial oppressors were exposed and defeated: the taxes and tributes were diminished; and the public expenses were thrown as much as possible upon the public estates, and in some instances upon his own private estates. So far, indeed, did Pius stretch his sympathy with the poorer classes of his subjects, that on this account chiefly he resided permanently in the capital-alleging in excuse, partly that he thus stationed himself in the very centre of his mighty empire, to which all couriers could come by the shortest radii, but chiefly that he thus spared the provincialists those burthens which must else have alighted upon them; "for," said he, "even the slenderest retinue of a Roman Emperor is burthensome to the whole line of its progress." His tenderness and consideration, indeed, were extended to all classes, and all relations, of his subjects; even to those who stood in the shadow of his public displeasure as state delinquents, or as the most atrocious criminals. To the children of great treasury defaulters, he returned the confiscated estates of their fathers, deducting only what might repair the public loss. And so resolutely did he refuse to shed the blood of any in the senatorial order, to whom he conceived himself more especially bound in paternal ties, that even a parricide, whom the laws would not suffer to live, was simply exposed upon a desert island.

Little indeed did Pius want of being a perfect Christian in heart and in practice. Yet all this display of goodness and merciful indulgence, nay, all his munificence, would have availed him little with the people at large, had he neglected to furnish shows and exhibitions in the arena of suitable magnificence. Luckily for his reputation, he exceeded the general standard of imperial splendour not less as the patron of the amphitheatre than in his more important functions. It is recorded of him-that in one missio he sent forward on the arena a hundred lions. Nor was he less distinguished by

the rarity of the wild animals which he exhibited than by their number. There were elephants, there were crocodiles, there were hippopotami at one time upon the stage: there was also the rhinoceros, and the still rarer crocuta or corocotta, with a few strepsikerotes. Some of these were matched in duels, some in general battles with tigers; in fact, there was no species of wild animal through. out the deserts and sandy Zaarras of Africa, the infinite steppes of Asia, or the lawny recesses and dim forests of then silvan Europe, no species known to natural history, (and some even of which naturalists have lost sight,) which the Emperor Pius did not produce to his Roman subjects on his ceremonious pomps. And in another point he carried his splendours to a point which set the seal to his liberality. In the phrase of modern auctioneers, he gave up the wild beasts to slaughter "without reserve." It was the custom, in ordinary cases, so far to consider the enormous cost of these far-fetched rarities as to preserve for future occasions those which escaped the arrows of the populace, or survived the bloody combats in which they were engaged. Thus, out of the overflowings of one great exhibition, would be found materials for another. But Pius would not allow of these reservations. All were given up unreservedly to the savage purposes of the spectators: land and sea were ransacked; the sanctuaries of the Torrid Zone were violated; columns of the army were put in motion-and all for the transient effect of crowning an extra hour with betacombs of forest blood, each separate minute of which had cost a king's ransom.

Yet these displays were alien to the nature of Pius; and, even through the tyranny of custom, he had been

so little changed, that to the last he continued to turn aside, as often as the public ritual of his duty allowed him, from these fierce spectacles to the gentler amusements of fishing and hunting. His taste and his affections naturally carried him to all domestic pleasures of a quiet nature. A walk in a shrubbery or along a piazza, enlivened with the conversation of a friend or two, pleased him better than all the court festivals; and among festivals, or anniversary celebrations, he preferred those which, like the harvest-home or feast of the vintagers, whilst they sanctioned a total carelessness and dismissal of public anxieties, were at the same time coloured by the innocent gaiety which belongs to rural and to primitive manners.-In person this Emperor was tall and dignified (staturâ elevatâ decorus); but latterly he stooped; to remedy which defect, that he might discharge his public part with the more decorum, he wore stays.† Of his other personal habits little is recorded, except that, early in the morning, and just before receiving the compliments of his friends and dependents (salutatores,) or what in modern phrase would be called his levee, he took a little plain bread, (panem siccum comedit,) that is, bread without condiments or accompaniments of any kind, by way of breakfast.

In no meal has luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (cana) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally

allowed themselves; some indeed drank wine after it, but this was far from being a common practice.*

The Emperor Pius died in his seventieth year. The immediate occasion of his death was-not breakfast nor cena, but something of the kind. He had received a present of Alpine cheese, and he ordered some for supper. The trap for his life was baited with toasted cheese. There is no reason to think that he ate immoderately; but that night he was seized with indigestion. Delirium followed; during which it is singular that his mind teemed with a class of imagery and of passions the most remote (as it might have been thought) from the voluntary occupations of his thoughts. He raved about the State, and about those kings with whom he was displeased; nor were his thoughts one moment removed from the public service. Yet he was the least ambitious of princes, and his reign was emphatically said to be bloodless. Finding his fever increase, he became sensible that he was dying; and he ordered the golden statue of Prosperity, a household symbol of empire, to be transferred from his own bedroom to that of his successor. Once again, however, for the last time, he gave the word to the officer of the guard; and, soon after, turning away his face to the wall against which his bed was placed, he passed out of life in the very gentlest sleep, "quasi dormiret, spiritum reddidit," or, as a Greek author expresses it, κατ' ίσα ύπνῳ τῳ μαλακαίατῳ. He was one of those few Roman Emperors whom posterity truly honoured with the title of avaiaros (or bloodless;) solusque omnium propè principum prorsus sine civili sanguine et hostili vixit. In the whole tenor of his life and character he was thought to resemble Numa. And Pausanias, after remarking on his title of Evrens (or Pius), upon the meaning and origin of which there are several different

hypotheses, closes with this memorable tribute to his paternal qualities

δοξη δε έμῃ, και το όνομα το το Κυρι φέροιτο ἀν τε πρεσβυτέρω, Πατης ἀνθρωπων xavos: but, in my opinion, he should also bear the name of Cyrus the elder-being hailed as Father of the Human Race.

A thoughtful Roman would have been apt to exclaim, This is too good to last, upon finding so admirable a ruler succeeded by one still more admirable in the person of Marcus Aurelius. From the first dawn of his infancy this prince indicated, by his grave deportment, the philosophic character of his mind; and at eleven years of age he professed himself a formal devotee of philosophy in its strictest form,-assuming the garb, and submitting to its most ascetic ordinances. In particular, he slept upon the ground, and in other respects he practised a style of living the most simple and remote from the habits of rich men [or, in his own words, rò rèv xarà riv dialταν, καὶ ποῤῥω τῆς πλυσιακῆς ἀγωγῆς]; though it is true that he himself ascribes this simplicity of life to the influence of his mother, and not to the premature assumption of the stoical character. He pushed his austerities indeed to excess; for Dio mentions that in his boyish days he was reduced to great weakness by exercises too severe, and a diet of too little nutriment. In fact, his whole heart was set upon philosophic attainments, and perhaps upon philosophic glory. All the great philosophers of his own time, whether Stoic or Peripatetic, and amongst them Sextus of Cheronæa, a nephew of Plutarch, were retained as his instructors. There was none whom he did not enrich; and as many as were fitted by birth and manners to fill important situations, he raised to the highest offices in the state. Philosophy, however, did not so much absorb his affections, but that he found time to cultivate the fine arts