ood quality of a
fourth."

Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in a state of
rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his fellow creatures; above
all it is hard, when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed,
and has had the meanness and perversity of his fellow creatures thrust, in
no common measure, upon his notice--has had, time after time, to
experience how "within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou
art now a beast and an ape." His true strain of thought as to his
relations with his fellow men is rather the following. He has been
enumerating the higher consolations which may support a man at the
approach of death, and he goes on:--

"But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy
heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects
from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom
thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to be offended
with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them
gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be from men who
have the same principles as thyself. For this is the only thing, if there
be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life--to be
permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves.
But now thou seest how great is the distress caused by the difference of
those who live together, so that thou mayest say: 'Come quick, O death,
lest perchance I too should forget myself.'"

_O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how
long shall I suffer you?_ Sometimes this strain rises even to passion:--

"Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain.
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to
live as men do."

It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary character, how
little of those _scoriae_ which a reader has to clear away before he gets
to the precious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or question, the
morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. In general, the action he prescribes
is action which every sound nature must recognize as right, and the
motives he assigns are motives which every clear reason must recognize as
valid. And so he remains the especial friend and comforter of scrupulous
and difficul