the future condition of our families and our country in our estimate of
happiness? Shall we ignore, in the dazzling life of a few favored
extortioners, monopolists, and successful gamblers all that Christianity
points out as the hope and solace and glory of mankind? Not thus would
we estimate human felicity. Not thus would Marcus Aurelius, as he cast
his sad and prophetic eye down the vistas of succeeding reigns, and saw
the future miseries and wars and violence which were the natural result
of egotism and vice, have given his austere judgment on the happiness of
his Empire. In all his sweetness and serenity, he penetrated the veil
which the eye of the worldly Gibbon could not pierce. _He_ declares that
"those things which are most valued are empty, rotten, and
trifling,"--these are his very words; and that the real _life_ of the
people, even in the days of Trajan, had ceased to exist,--that
everything truly precious was lost in the senseless grasp after what can
give no true happiness or permanent prosperity.

AUTHORITIES.

The "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius; Epictetus should be read in
connection. Renan's Life of Marcus Aurelius. Farrar's Seekers after God.
Arnold has also written some interesting things about this emperor. In
Smith's Dictionary there is an able article. Gibbon says something, but
not so much as we could wish. Tillemont, in his History of the Emperors,
says more. I would also refer my readers to my "Old Roman World," to
Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, and to Montesquieu's treatise on
the Decadence of the Romans. The original Roman authorities which have
come down to us are meagre and few.