estroyed, and
centuries after the statue of St. Paul exalted to the vacant place, as
if to show that the "height of Rome" is not quite the perfection of all
humanity, and that even the purest of ancient philosophies is incomplete
without the supplement of a more humane and universal wisdom.

Mr. Long's preliminary dissertation on "The Philosophy of Antoninus" is
thorough and satisfactory, so far as that specific subject is concerned,
but presents a very inadequate view of the Stoic philosophy in general,
and strikes us as unjust in its incidental disparaging notice (in a
footnote) of Seneca, who, after all, will ever be regarded as the
greatest literary product of that school.

The book itself to which this essay introduces us is one of the few
monuments that remain to us, and by far the best monument that remains
to us, of the interior spiritual life of the better class of that
Graeco-Roman world of whose exterior life we know so much. Not to have
read it is not to know the deepest mind of the ancients. Two things in
it are prevailingly prominent: first, a noble nature; secondly, an
extreme civilization, already faltering, turned to decline, expecting
its fall. On every page lies the shadow of impending doom; on every page
shines forth the great, heroic soul equal to every fate. The work--if
work it can be called--is entirely aphoristic, with no apparent plan; in
fact, a note-book or diary of thoughts and fancies, set down as they
occurred from time to time, and as leisure favored the record. In its
structure, or rather want of structure, and in some of its suggestions,
it reminds one of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Yet the difference between
them is immense. The prevailing tone of Ecclesiastes is skepticism, that
of the "Thoughts" is faith. The one is morbid, the other sane; the one
relaxes, the other braces; the one is steeped in despondency and gloom,
the other is redolent of manly courage and cheerful trust. The Emperor,
like the Preacher, has much to say about death; but he views the subject
from a higher plane, and envisages the final event with a better hope.
He does not think that a living dog is better than a dead lion.

"What, then, is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing, and only
one, philosophy.[33] But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man
free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing
nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy,... and
beside