asure of pardoning him_. And there are one or two more anecdotes of
him which show the same spirit. But the great record for the outward
life of a man who has left such a record of his lofty inward aspirations
as that which Marcus Aurelius has left, is the clear consenting voice of
all his contemporaries,--high and low, friend and enemy, pagan and
Christian,--in praise of his sincerity, justice, and goodness. The
world's charity does not err on the side of excess, and here was a man
occupying the most conspicuous station in the world, and professing the
highest possible standard of conduct;--yet the world was obliged to
declare that he walked worthily of his profession. Long after his death,
his bust was to be seen in the houses of private men through the wide
Roman empire. It may be the vulgar part of human nature which busies
itself with the semblance and doings of living sovereigns, it is its
nobler part which busies itself with those of the dead; these busts of
Marcus Aurelius, in the homes of Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bear witness,
not to the inmates' frivolous curiosity about princes and palaces, but
to their reverential memory of the passage of a great man upon the
earth.

Two things, however, before one turns from the outward to the inward
life of Marcus Aurelius, force themselves upon one's notice, and demand
a word of comment; he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son
the vicious and brutal Commodus.[214] The persecution at Lyons, in which
Attalus[215] and Pothinus suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which
Polycarp[216] suffered, took place in his reign. Of his humanity, of his
tolerance, of his horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain
from severe measures against the Christians, of his anxiety to temper
the severity of these measures when they appeared to him indispensable,
there is no doubt: but, on the one hand, it is certain that the letter,
attributed to him, directing that no Christian should be punished for
being a Christian, is spurious; it is almost certain that his alleged
answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which he directs that Christians
persisting in their profession shall be dealt with according to law, is
genuine. Mr. Long seems inclined to try and throw doubt over the
persecution at Lyons, by pointing out that the letter of the Lyons
Christians relating it, alleges it to have been attended by miraculous
and incredible incidents. "A man," he says, "can only act co