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 splendor 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 throughout the deserts and sandy Zaarras

of Africa, the infinite steppes of Asia, or the lawny recesses and dim forests of then sylvan Europe,34 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 splendors 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 hetacombs 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

s;

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 colored 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

Of his other per

the more decorum, he wore stays.35 sonal 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. 36

The Emperor Pius died in his seventieth year. The immediate occasion of his death was. - not breakfast nor cœna, 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 indi gestion. 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' ίσε ὕπνῳ τῳ μαλακωτατῳ. He was one of those few Roman emperors whom posterity truly honored with the title of avaquatos (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 Evosßns (or Pius), upon the meaning and origin of which there are several different hypotheses, closes with this memorable tribute to his paternal qualities — δόξῃ δε έμῃ, και το όνομα το το Κυρι φέροιτο ἂν τε πρεσβυτερω, Πατηρ ἀνθρωπων καλεμενος : 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