f Verus had been hastened by his means!

I have only one reason for alluding to atrocious and contemptible
calumnies like these, and that is because--since no doubt such whispers
reached his ears--they help to account for that deep unutterable
melancholy which breathes through the little golden book of the
Emperor's _Meditations_. We find, for instance, among them this isolated
fragment:--

"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial,
childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent,
tyrannical."

We know not of whom he was thinking--perhaps of Nero, perhaps of
Caligula, but undoubtedly also of men whom he had seen and known, and
whose very existence darkened his soul. The same sad spirit breathes
also through the following passages:--

"Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name,
or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are
much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and trifling, and _little
dogs biting one another, and little children quarrelling, laughing, and
then straightway weeping. But fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and
truth are fled_

"'Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.'"

(v. 33.)

"It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having
had a taste of lying, and hypocrisy, and luxury, and pride. However to
_breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of those things_ is
the next best voyage, as the saying is." (ix. 2.)

"_Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and apish trifles._ Why
art thou thus disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles
thee?... Towards the gods, then, now become at last more simple and
better." (ix. 37.) The thought is like that which dominates through the
Penitential Psalms of David,--that we may take refuge from men, their
malignity and their meanness, and find rest for our souls in God. From
men David has _no_ hope; mockery, treachery, injustice, are all that he
expects from them,--the bitterness of his enemies, the far-off
indifference of his friends. Nor does this greatly trouble him, so long
as he does not wholly lose the light of _God's_ countenance. "I had no
place to flee unto, and no man cared for my soul. I cried unto thee, O
Lord, and said, _Thou_ art my hope, and my portion in the land of the
living." "Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy
Spirit from me."

But whatever may have been his impulse a