who honoured the wise and distinguished the meritorious; who was indifferent to contemptable trifles, and indefatigable in earnest business; one, in short, “who had a perfect and invincible soul,” who, like Socrates, “was able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without excess.” [67] Piety, serenity, sweetness, disregard of empty fame, calmness, simplicity, patience, are virtues which he attributes to him in another full-length portrait (vi. 30) which he concludes with the words, “Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience when thy last hour comes as he had.”

[Footnote 67:  My quotations from Marcus Aurelius will be made (by permission) from the forcible and admirably accurate translation of Mr. Long.  In thanking Mr. Long, I may be allowed to add that the English reader will find in his version the best means of becoming acquainted with the purest-and noblest book of antiquity.]

He concludes these reminiscenses of thankfulness with a summary of what he owed to the gods.  And for what does he thanks the gods? for being wealthy, and noble, and an emperor?  Nay, for no vulgar or dubious blessings such as these, but for the guidance which trained him in philosophy, and for the grace which kept him from sin.  And here it is that his genuine modesty comes out.  As the excellent divine used to say when he saw a criminal led past for execution, “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford,” so, after thanking the gods for the goodness of all his family and relatives, Aurelius says, “Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried into any offence against any of them, though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered, might have led me to do something of this kind; but through their favour there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial.  Further, that I was subjected to a ruler and father who took away all pride from me, and taught me that it was possible to live in a palace without guards, or embroidered dresses, or torches, and statues, and such-like show, but to live very near to the fashion of a private person, without being either mean in thought or remiss in action; that after having fallen into amatory passions I was cured; that though it was my mother’s fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that whenever I wished to help any man, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it;—­that I had abundance of good masters for my children:  for all these thing require the help of the gods and fortune.”

The whole of the Emperor’s Meditations deserve the profound study of this age.  The self-denial which they display is a rebuke to our ever-growing luxury; their generosity contrasts favourably with the increasing bitterness of our cynicism; their contented acquiescence in God’s will rebukes our incessant restlessness; above all, their constant elevation shames that multitude of little vices, and little meannesses, which lie like a scurf over the conventionality of modern life.  But this earlier chapter has also a special value for the young.  It offers a picture which it would indeed be better for them and for us if they could be induced to study.  If even under