the Senate was sometimes assembled in the palace,
and she took no pains to conceal from the senators that she was herself
seated behind a curtain where she could hear every word of their
deliberations;--nay, on one occasion, when Nero was about to give
audience to an important Armenian legation, she had the audacity to
enter the audience-chamber, and advance to take her seat by the side of
the Emperor. Every one else was struck dumb with amazement, and even
terror, at a proceeding so unusual; but Seneca, with ready and admirable
tact, suggested to Nero that he should rise and meet his mother, thus
obviating a public scandal under the pretext of filial affection.

But Seneca from the very first had been guilty of a fatal error in the
education of his pupil. He had governed him throughout on the ruinous
principle of _concession_. Nero was not devoid of talent; he had a
decided turn for Latin versification, and the few lines of his
composition which have come down to us, _bizarre_ and effected as they
are, yet display a certain sense of melody and power of language. But
his vivid imagination was accompained by a want of purpose; and Seneca,
instead of trying to train him in habits of serious attention and
sustained thought, suffered him to waste his best efforts in pursuits
and amusements which were considered partly frivolous and partly
disreputable, such as singing, painting, dancing, and driving. Seneca
might have argued that there was, at any rate, no great harm in such
employments, and that they probably kept Nero out of worse mischief. But
we respect Nero the less for his indifferent singing and harp-twanging
just as we respect Louis XVI. less for making very poor locks; and, if
Seneca had adopted a loftier tone with his pupil from the first, Rome
might have been spared the disgraceful folly of Nero's subsequent
buffooneries in the cities of Greece and the theatres of Rome. We may
lay it down as an invariable axiom in all high education, that it is
_never_ sensible to permit what is bad for the supposed sake of
preventing what is worse. Seneca very probably persuaded himself that
with a mind like Nero's--the innate worthlessness of which he must early
have recognised--success of any high description would be simply
impossible. But this did not absolve him from attempting the only noble
means by which success could, under any circumstances, be attainable.
Let us, however, remember that his concessions to his pupil wer