age, as heading that shining array, the Howards and the Wilberforces, who have since then in a practical sense hearkened to the sighs of "all prisoners and captives" - we are ready to suppose him addressed by the great Founder of Christianity, in the words of Scripture," Verily, I say unto thee, Thou art not fur from the kingdom of heaven."

As a supplement to the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we ought to notice the rise of one great rebel, the sole civil disturber of his time, in Syria. This was Avidius Cassius, whose descent from Cassius (the noted conspirator against the great dictator, Julius) seems to have suggested to him a wandering idea, and at length a formal purpose of restoring the ancient republic. Avidius was the commander-in-chief of the Oriental army, whose head-quarters were then fixed at Antioch. His native disposition, which inclined him to cruelty, and his political views, made him, from his first entrance upon office, a severe disciplinarian. The well-known enormities of the neighbouring Daphne gave him ample opportunities for the exercise of his harsh propensities in reforming the dissolute soldiery. He amputated heads, arms, feet, and hams: he turned out his mutilated victims, as walking spectacles of warning; he burned them; he smoked them to death; and, in one instance, he crucified a detachment of his army, together with their centurions, for having, unauthorized, gained a splendid victory, and captured a large booty on the Danube. Upon this the soldiers mutinied against him, in mere indignation at his tyranny. However, he prosecuted his purpose, and prevailed, by his bold contempt of the danger which menaced him. From the abuses in the army, he proceeded to attack the abuses of the civil administration. But as these were protected by the example of the great Proconsular lieutenants and provincial governors, policy obliged him to confine himself to verbal expressions of anger; until at length, sensible that this impotent railing did but expose him to contempt, he resolved to arm himself with the powers of radical reform, by open rebellion. His ultimate purpose was the restoration of

the ancient republic, or, (as he himself expresses it in an interesting letter, which yet survives,) "ut in antiquum statum publica forma reddatur ;" i.e that the constitution should be restored to its original condition. And this must be effected by military violence and the aid of the execu tioner-or, in his own words, multis gladiis, multis elogiis, (by innumerable sabres, by innumerable records of condemnation). Against this man Marcus was warned by his imperial colleague Lucius Verus, in a very remarkable letter. After expressing his suspicions of him generally, the writer goes on to say-" I would you had him closely watched. For he is a general disliker of us and of our doings; he is gathering together an enormous treasure, and he makes an open jest of our literary pursuits. You, for instance, he calls a philosophizing old woman, and me a dissolute buffoon and scamp. Consider what you would have done. For my part, I bear the fellow no ill will; but again, I say, take care that he does not do a mischief to yourself, or your children."

The answer of Marcus is noble and characteristic:-" I have read your letter, and I will confess to you I think it more scrupulously timid than becomes an Emperor, and timid in a way unsuited to the spirit of our times. Consider this-if the empire is destined to Cassius by the decrees of Providence, in that case it will not be in our power to put him to death, however much we may desire to do so. You know your greatgrandfather's saying,-No prince ever killed his own heir-no man, that is, ever yet prevailed against one whom Providence had marked out as his successor. On the other hand, if Providence opposes him, then, without any cruelty on our part, he will spontaneously fall into some snare spread for him by destiny. Besides, we cannot treat a man as under impeachment whom nobody impeaches, and whom, by your own confession, the soldiers love. Then again, in cases of high treason, even those criminals who are convicted upon the clearest evidence, yet, as friendless and deserted persons contending against the powerful, and matched against those who are armed with the whole au

thority of the State, seem to suffer some wrong. You remember what your grandfather said-wretched, indeed, is the fate of princes, who then first obtain credit in any charges of conspiracy which they allege when they happen to seal the validity of their charges against the plotters, by falling martyrs to the plot. Domitian it was, in fact, who first uttered this truth; but I choose rather to place it under the authority of Hadrian, because the sayings of tyrants, even when they are true and happy, carry less weight with them than naturally they ought. For Cassius then, let him keep his present temper and inclinations; and the more so-being (as he is) a good General-austere in his discipline, brave, and one whom the State cannot afford to lose. For as to what you insinuate that I ought to provide for my children's interests, by putting this man judicially out of the way, very frankly I say to youPerish my children if Avidius shall deserve more attachment than they, and if it shall prove salutary to the State that Cassius should live rather than the children of Marcus."

This letter affords a singular illustration of fatalism, such certainly as we might expect in a Stoic, but carried even to a Turkish excessand not theoretically professed only, but practically acted upon in a case of capital hazard. That no prince ever killed his own successor, i. e., that it was vain for a prince to put conspirators to death, because by the very possibility of doing so, a demonstration is obtained, that such conspirators had never been destined to prosper, is as condensed and striking an expression of fatalism as ever has been devised. The rest of the letter is truly noble, and breathes the very soul of careless magnanimity reposing upon conscious innocence. Meantime Cassius increased in power and influence his army had become a most formidable engine of his ambition through its restored discipline; and his own authority was sevenfold greater, because he had himself created that discipline in the face of unequalled temptations hourly renewed and rooted in the very centre of his headquarters. "Daphne, by Orontes," a suburb of Antioch, was

VOL. XXXV. NO. CCXXIII.

infamous for its seductions; and Daphnic luxury had become proverbial for expressing an excess of voluptuousness, such as other places could not rival by mere defect of means, and preparations elaborate enough to sustain it in all its varieties of mode, or to conceal it from public notice. In the very purlieus of this great nest, or stye of sensuality, within sight and touch of its pollutions-did he keep his army fiercely reined up-daring and defying them, as it were, to taste of the banquet whose very odour they inhaled.

Thus provided with the means, and improved instruments, for executing his purposes, he broke out into open rebellion; and, though hostile to the principatus or personal supremacy of one man, he did not feel his republican purism at all wounded by the style and title of Imperator-that being a military term, and a mere titular honour which had co-existed with the severest forms of republicanism,— Imperator then he was saluted and proclaimed; and doubtless the writer of the warning letter from Syria would now declare that the sequel had justified the fears which Marcus had thought so unbecoming to a Roman emperor. But again Marcus would have said-" Let us wait for the sequel of the sequel," and that would have justified him. It is often found by experience that men, who have learned to reverence a person in authority chiefly by his offices of correction applied to their own aberrations, who have known and feared him, in short, in his character of reformer, will be more than usually inclined to desert him on his first movement in the direction of wrong. Their obedience being founded on fear, and fear being never wholly disconnected from hatred, they naturally seize with eagerness upon the first lawful pretext for disobedience; the luxury of revenge is, in such a case, too potent,-a meritorious disobedience too novel a temptation, to have a chance of being rejected. Never, indeed, does erring human nature look more abject than in the person of a severe exactor of duty, who has immolated thousands to the wrath of offended law, suddenly himself becoming a capital offender, a glo

zing tempter in search of accomplices, and in that character at once standing before the meanest of his own dependents as a self-deposed officer, liable to any man's arrest, and, ipso facto, a suppliant for his own mercy. The stern and haughty Cassius, who had so often tightened the cords of discipline until they threatened to snap asunder, now found, experimentally, the bitterness of these obvious truths. The trembling sentinel now looked in solently in his face; the cowering legionary, with whom "to hear was to obey," now mused or even bandied words upon his orders:-the great lieutenants of his office, who stood next to his own person in authority, were preparing for revolt open or secret, as circumstances should prescribe; not the accuser only, but the very avenger, was upon his steps; Nemesis, that Nemesis who once so closely adhered to the name and fortunes of the lawful Caesar, turning against every one of his assassins the edge of his own assassinating sword, was already at his heels; and in the midst of a sudden prosperity, and its accompanying shouts of gratulation, he heard the sullen knells of approaching death. Antioch, it was true, the great Roman capital of the Orient, bore him, for certain motives of selfinterest, peculiar good-will. But

there was no city of the world in which the Roman Cæsar did not reckon many liege-men and partisans. And the very hands which dressed his altars and crowned his Prætorian pavilion, might not improbably in that same hour put an edge upon the sabre which was to avenge the injuries of the too indulgent and long-suffering Antoninus. Meantime, to give a colour of patriotism to his treason, Cassius alleged public motives; in a letter, which he wrote after assuming the purple, he says-" Wretched empire, miserable state, which endures these hungry blood-suckers battening on her vitals!-A worthy man doubtless is Marcus; who, in his eagerness to be reputed clement, suffers those to live whose conduct he himself abhors. Where is that L. Cassius, whose name I vainly inherit? Where is that Marcus-not Aurelius, mark you, but Cato Cen

sorius? Where the good old discipline of ancestral times, long since indeed disused, but now not so much as looked after in our aspirations? Marcus Antoninus is a scholar; he enacts the philosopher; and he tries conclusions upon the four elements, and upon the nature of the soul; and he discourses learnedly upon the Honestum; and concerning the Summum Bonum he is unanswerable. Meanwhile is he learned in the interests of the State? Can he argue a point upon the public economy? You see what a host of sabres is required, what a host of impeachments, sentences, executions, before the commonwealth can reassume its ancient integrity!— What! shall I esteem as proconsuls, as governors, those who for that end only deem themselves invested with lieutenancies or great senatorial appointments-that they may gorge themselves with the provincial luxuries and wealth? No doubt you heard in what way our friend the philosopher gave the place of prætorian prefect to one who but three days before was a bankrupt-insolvent, by G, and a beggar; be not you content-that same gentleman is now as rich as a prefect should be; and has been so, I tell you, any time these three days. And how, I pray you, how-how, my good sir? How but out of the bowels of the provinces, and the marrow of their bones?-But no matter, let them be rich; let them be blood-suckers; so much, God willing, shall they regorge into the treasury of the empire. Let but Heaven smile upon our party, and the Cassiani shall return to the republic its old impersonal supremacy."

But Heaven did not smile; nor did man. Rome heard with bitter indignation of this old traitor's ingratitude, and his false mask of republican civism. Excepting Marcus Aurelius himself, not one man but thirsted for revenge. And that was soon obtained. He and all his supporters, one after the other, rapidly fell (as Marcus had predicted) into snares laid by the officers who continued true to their allegiance. Except the family and household of Cassius, there remained in a short time none for the vengeance of the Senate, or for the mercy of the Em