have called forth great diversity of opinion. He was a brilliant and popular writer, and in modern times has been commended by Montaigne and Niebuhr. According to the Roman critic, Quintilian, his writings "abound in charming defects.” His style is aphoristic, antithetical, and somewhat inflated. His essays are Stoic sermons. His school is remarkable for its anticipation of modern ethical conceptions, and for the lofty morality of its exhortations to forgive injuries. Among his works, besides moral treatises, "On Anger," "On Providence," "On Serenity of Mind," and essays on natural science, he published numerous tragedies in verse, and many epistles abounding in excellent maxims. He rejected the popular mythology of the Romans, and may be regarded as a Deist.

SENECA IN EXILE.

In A.D. 41, in the prime of life and the full vigor of his faculties, with a name stained by a charge of which he may have been innocent, but of which he was condemned as guilty, Seneca bade farewell to his noble-minded mother, to his loving aunt, to his brothers, the beloved Gallio and the literary Mela, to his nephew, the ardent and promising young Lucan, and, above all-which cost him the severest pang-to Marcus, his sweet and prattling little boy. It was a calamity which might have shaken the fortitude of the very noblest soul, and it had by no means come upon him single-handed. Already he had lost his wife, he had suffered from acute and chronic ill-health, he had been bereaved but three weeks previously of another little son. He had been cut short by the jealousy of one emperor from a career of splendid success; he was now banished, by the imbecile subservience of another, from all that he held most dear.

Corsica was the island chosen for his place of banishment, and a spot more uninviting could hardly have been selected. It was an island "shaggy and savage," intersected from north to south by a chain of wild, inaccessible mountains, clothed to their summits with gloomy and impenetrable forests of pine and fir. Its untamable inhabitants are described by the geographer Strabo as being "wilder than the wild beasts." It produced but little corn and scarcely any

fruit-trees. It abounded, indeed, in swarms of wild bees; but its very honey was bitter and unpalatable, from being infected with the acrid taste of the box-flowers on which they fed. Neither gold nor silver were found there; it produced nothing worth exporting, and barely sufficient for the mere necessaries of its inhabitants; it rejoiced in no great navigable rivers, and even the trees, in which it abounded, were neither beautiful nor fruitful. Seneca describes it in more than one of his epigrams as a

"Terrible isle, when earliest summer glows,
Yet fiercer when his face the dog-star shows;

and again as a

"Barbarous land, which rugged rocks surround,
Whose horrent cliffs with idle wastes are crowned,
No autumn fruit, no tilth the summer yields,
Nor olives cheer the winter-silvered fields:
Nor joyous spring her tender foliage lends,
Nor genial herb the luckless soil befriends;

Nor bread, nor sacred fire, nor freshening wave ;—
Naught here-save exile, and the exile's grave!"

In such a place, and under such conditions, Seneca had ample need for all his philosophy. And at first it did not fail him. Towards the close of his first year of exile he wrote the "Consolation to his mother Helvia," which is one of the noblest and most charming of all his works.

"There is no land where man cannot dwell,-no land where he cannot uplift his eyes to heaven; wherever we are, the distance of the divine from the human remains the same. So then, as long as my eyes are not robbed of that spectacle with which they cannot be satiated, so long as I may look upon the sun and moon, and fix my lingering gaze upon the other constellations, and consider their rising and setting, and the spaces between them, and the causes of their less and greater speed,-while I may contemplate the multitude of stars glittering throughout the heaven, some stationary, some revolving, some suddenly blazing forth, others dazzling the gaze with a flood of fire as though they fell, and others leaving over a long space their trails of light; while I am in the midst

of such phenomena, and mingle myself, as far as a man may, with things celestial,-while my soul is ever occupied in contemplations so sublime as these, what matters it what ground I tread?

"What though fortune has thrown me where the most magnificent abode is but a cottage? The humblest cottage, if it be but the home of virtue, may be more beautiful than all temples; no place is narrow which can contain the crowd of glorious virtues; no exile severe into which you may go with such a reliance. When Brutus left Marcellus at Mitylene, he seemed to be himself going into exile because he left that illustrious exile behind him. Cæsar would not land at Mitylene, because he blushed to see him. Marcellus, therefore, though he was living in exile and poverty, was living a most happy and a most noble life.

"One self-approving hour whole worlds outweighs

Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.'

"And as for poverty, every one who is not corrupted by the madness of avarice and luxury knows that it is no evil. How little does man need, and how easily can he secure that! As for me, I consider myself as having lost not wealth, but the trouble of looking after it. Bodily wants are fewwarmth and food, nothing more. May the gods and goddesses confound that gluttony which sweeps the sky, and sea, and land for birds, and animals, and fish; which eats to vomit and vomits to eat, and hunts over the whole world for that which after all it cannot even digest! They might satisfy their hunger with little, and they excite it with much. What harm can poverty inflict on a man who despises such excesses? Look at the godlike and heroic poverty of our ancestors, and compare the simple glory of a Camillus with the lasting infamy of a luxurious Apicius! Even exile will yield a sufficiency of necessaries, but not even kingdoms are enough for superfluities. It is the soul that makes us rich or poor: and the soul follows us into exile, and finds and enjoys its own blessings, even in the most barren solitudes.

"And if you make the objection that the ills which assail me are not exile only, or poverty only, but disgrace as well, I reply that the soul which is hardy enough to resist one wound is invulnerable to all. If we have utterly conquered the fear of death, nothing else can daunt us. What is disgrace to one who stands above the opinion of the multitude? What was even a death of disgrace to Socrates, who by entering a prison made it cease to be disgraceful? Cato was twice defeated in his candidature for the prætorship and consulship: well, this was the disgrace of those honors, and not of Cato. No one can be despised by another until he has learnt to despise himself. The man who has learnt to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched. Such men inflict disgrace upon disgrace itself. Some indeed say that death is preferable to contempt; to whom I reply that he who is great when he falls is great in his prostration, and is no more an object of contempt than when men tread on the ruins of sacred buildings, which men of piety venerate no less than if they stood."

-F. W. FARRAR,

TRAJAN was so distinguished for his virtue, and for the moderation and simplicity

of his mode of life, that he is justly considered one of the best emperors of Rome. After his reign each succeeding emperor was saluted with the wish that he might be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan.

Marcus Ulpius Trajanus was born at Italica, near Seville, in Spain, Sept. 18, 52 A.D., and his youth was passed under the rigorous discipline of the Roman camp. His father, a hardy soldier, whose character was not greatly affected by luxury or culture, had risen from the ranks to be a consul and patrician. The son's training was almost exclusively military. He was by nature adapted to command, having a strong constitution, intrepid courage, good health, a tall stature and a noble presence. His mode of living was very simple, and he shared the privations and sufferings of the private soldiers. He married Pompeia Plotina, a woman of excellent character.

Trajan served under his father in the war against the Parthians, and as military tribune he was employed for ten years in different parts of the empire. He afterwards became prætor and consul. He gained the favor of the aged Emperor Nerva, who, in October, 97 A.D., adopted Trajan as his son, and gave him the rank of Cæsar, the title of Imperator, and the tribunician authority. The Senate confirmed the choice,