affluence of their fortune. Let us imagine that we behold a great dictator giving audience to the Samnite ambassadors, and preparing on the hearth his mean repast with the same hand which had so often subdued the enemies of the Commonwealth, and borne the triumphal laurel to the capitol. Let us remember that Plato had but three servants, and that Zeno had none. Socrates, the reformer of his country, was maintained, as Menenius Agrippa, the arbiter of his country, was buried, by contribution. While Attilius Regulus beat the Carthaginians, in Afric, the flight of his ploughman reduced his family to distress at home, and the tillage of his little farm became the public care. Scipio died without leaving enough to marry his daughters, and their portions were paid out of the treasures of the state; for sure it was just that the people of Rome should once pay tribute to him who had established a perpetual tribute on Carthage. After such examples, shall we be afraid of poverty? Shall we disdain to be adopted into a family which has so many illustrious ancestors? Shall we complain of banishment for taking from us what the greatest philosophers and the greatest heroes of antiquity never enjoyed?

You will find fault, perhaps, and attribute to artifice, that I consider singly misfortunes which come altogether on the banished man, and overbear him with their united weight; you could support change of place if it was not accompanied with poverty, or poverty if it was not accompanied with the separation from your family and your friends, with the loss of your rank, consideration, and power, with contempt and ignominy. Whoever he be who reasons in this manner, let him take the following answer. The least of these circumstances is singly sufficient to render the man iniserable who is not prepared for it, he who has not divested himself of that passion upon which it is directed to work. But he who has got the mastery of all his passions, who has foreseen all these accidents, and prepared his mind to endure them all, will be superior to all of them, and to all of them at once as well as singly. He will not bear the loss of his rank, because he can bear the loss of his estate; but he will bear both, because he is pre

pared for both; because he is free from pride as much as he is from avarice.

You are separated from your family and your friends. Take the list of them, and look it well over. How few of your family will you find who deserve the name of friends! And how few among these who are really such! Erase the names of such as ought not to stand on the roll, and the voluminous catalogue will soon dwindle into a narrow compass. Regret, if you please, your separation from this small remnant. Far be it from me, whilst I

declaim against a shameful and vicious weakness of mind, to proscribe the sentiments of a virtuous friendship. Regret your separation from your friends, but regret it like a man who deserves to be theirs. This is strength, not weakness of mind; it is virtue, not vice.

But the least uneasiness under the loss of the rank which we

held is ignominious. There is no valuable rank among men, but that which real merit assigns. The princes of the earth may give names, and institute ceremonies, and exact the observation of them; their imbecility and their wickedness may prompt them to clothe fools and knaves with robes of honour, and emblems of wisdom and virtue; but no man will be in truth superior to another, without superior merit: and that rank can no more be taken from us than the merit which establishes it. The supreme authority gives a fictitious and arbitrary value to coin, which is therefore not current alike in all times and in all places; but the real value remains invariable, and the provident man, who gets rid as soon as he can of the drossy piece, hoards up the good silver. Thus merit will not procure the same consideration universally. But what then? the title to this consideration is the same, and will be found alike in every circumstance by those who are wise and virtuous themselves. If it is not owned by such as are otherwise, nothing is however taken from us: we have no reason to complain. They considered us for a rank which we had; for our denomination, not for our intrinsic value. We have that rank, that denomination no longer; and they consider us no longer; they admire in us what we admire not in ourselves. If

they learn to neglect, let us learn to pity them. Their assiduity was importunate; let us not complain of the ease which this change procures us; let us rather apprehend the return of that rank and that power, which, like a sunny day, would bring back these little insects, and make them swarm once more about us. I know how apt we are, under specious pretences, to disguise our weaknesses and our vices, and how often we succeed, not only in deceiving the world, but even in deceiving ourselves. An inclination to do good is inseparable from a virtuous mind, and, therefore, the man who cannot bear with patience the loss of that rank and power which he enjoyed, may be willing to attribute his regrets to the impossibility which he supposes himself reduced to of satisfying this inclination. But let such an one know that a wise man contents himself with doing as much good as his situation allows him to do; that there is no situation wherein we may not do a great deal; and that, when we were deprived of greater power to do more good, we escape at the same time the tempta tion of doing some evil.

The inconveniences which we have mentioned carry nothing along with them difficult to be borne by a wise and virtuous man; and those which remained to be mentioned, contempt and ignominy, can never fall to his lot. It is impossible that he who reverences himself should be despised by others, and how can ignominy affect the man who collects all his strength within himself, who appeals from the judgment of the multitude to another tribunal, and lives independent of mankind and the accidents of life? Cato lost the election of prætor, and that of consul; but is any one blind enough to truth to imagine that these repulses reflected any disgrace on him? The dignity of those two magistracies would have been increased by his wearing them. They suffered, not Cato.

Ignominy can take no hold on virtue; for virtue is in every condition the same, and challenges the same respect. We applaud the world when she prospers, and when she falls into adversity we applaud her. Like the temples of the gods, she is

venerable even in her ruins. After this, must it not appear a degree of madness to defer one moment acquiring the only arms capable of defending us against the attacks which at every moment we are exposed to? Our being miserable, or not miserable, when we fall into misfortunes, depends on the manner in which we have enjoyed prosperity. If we have applied ourselves betimes to the study of wisdom, and to the practice of virtue, these evils become indifferent; but if we have neglected to do so they become necessary. In one case they are evils, in the other they are remedies for greater evils than themselves. Zeno rejoiced that a shipwreck had thrown him on the Athenian coast, and he owed to the loss of his fortune the acquisition which he made of virtue, of wisdom, of immortality. There are good and bad airs for the mind as well as for the body. Prosperity often irritates our chronical distempers, and leaves no hopes of finding any specific but in ad versity. In such cases banishment is like change of air, and the evils we suffer are like rough medicines applied to inveterate disWhat Anacharsis said of the vine may aptly enough be said of prosperity. She bears the three grapes of drunkenness, of pleasure, and of sorrow: and happy it is if the last can cure the mischief which the former work. When afflictions fail to have their due effect, the case is desperate. They are the last remedy which indulgent Providence uses: and, if they fail, we must languish and die in misery and contempt. Vain men! how seldom do we know what to wish or to pray for! When we pray against misfortunes, and when we fear them most we want them most. It was for this reason that Pythagoras forbade his disciples to ask anything in particular of God. The shortest and the best prayer which we can address to Him, who knows our wants, and our ig norance in asking, is this:-Thy will be done.

eases.

[CAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS, a great Roman historian, and one of the most remarkable writers of antiquity, is supposed to have been born in the reign of Nero. The following specimen of a translation of his "Annals" will give some notion of his unequalled condensation of thought, and his power of vigorous narration in the fewest words.]

Nero now began to shun all private interviews with his mother: whenever she withdrew to her gardens, or her villa at Tusculum, or to the neighbourhood of Antium, he would commend her for seeking retirement. At last, feeling her existence a heavy burden to him wherever she might be, he resolved to put her to death, the only matter of deliberation with him being whether he should get rid of her by poison, by the dagger, or by some other violent means. His first resolve was to take her off by poison. But, if poison should be given to her at the emperor's table, it could not be imputed to accident, for Britannicus had already perished by the same means; to tamper with the attendants of Agrippina appeared hazardous, for her experience in crime had made her vigilant against treachery, and she had fortified herself against poisons by the habit of taking antidotes. If the dagger was employed, nobody could suggest how the murder could be concealed; and Nero feared that, whoever was selected to commit so great a crime he might refuse to obey the emperor's commands.

Anicetus, a freedman, offered the resources of his invention. He was the commander of the fleet at Misenum, had been engaged in the education of Nero, and he and Agrippina hated one another. He told Nero that a vessel might be so constructed, that part of it could be detached when the vessel was afloat, and Agrippina thrown into the water before she was aware of it; that nothing gave so many chances of accident as the sea; and if Agrippina should perish in the wreck, who could be so unreason