Stoics has no worthier exponent
than the meditations of a sovereign who ruled the greatest empire known
to history, and glorified it with his own imperial spirit,--the noblest
that ever bore the burden of state.

Our third example, unlike the other two, has not been adopted by
ecclesiastical authority, and is not incorporated in any Vulgate of
sacred lore; but its place in the canon of philosophy has long been
established, and is often confirmed by fresh recognition. A new
translation of this celebrated work, of which several versions already
existed, has just been given to the English public by Mr. George Long, a
well-known scholar and critic, with the title above named. We should
have preferred the old title, "Meditations," so long endeared; but we
are none the less grateful to Mr. Long for this needful service, for
which no ordinary qualifications were required, and which has never
before been performed by such competent hands.

Gibbon has said, that, "if a man were called to fix the period in the
history of the world during which the condition of the human race was
most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." This
period comprises, together with the four concluding years of the first
century of the Christian era, four-fifths of the second. The last of
these fifths, deducting one year, (A.D. 161-180,) was occupied by the
supreme rule of Annios Verus, better known by his assumed name of Marcus
AElius Aurelius Antoninus, fifteenth emperor of the Romans, nephew and
successor of another Antoninus, whose virtues, and especially his
grateful remembrance of his predecessor and benefactor, procured him the
_agnomen_ of "Pius." In a line of sovereigns which numbers a larger
proportion of wise and good men than most dynasties, perhaps than any
other, M. Antoninus ranks first, so far as those qualities are
concerned. A man of singular and sublime virtue, whose imperial station,
so trying to human character, but served to render more conspicuous his
rare and transcendent excellence. With an empire such as never before or
since the Augustan dynasty has fallen to the lot of an individual, lord
of the civilized earth, he lived simply and abstemiously as the poorest
citizen in his dominions, frugal with unlimited means, humble with
unlimited sway. Not a Christian by profession, in piety toward God and
charity toward man he was yet a bette