Seekers after God

farewell to his noble-minded mother, to his loving aunt, to his brothers, the beloved Gallio and the literary Mela, to his nephew, the ardent and promising young Lucan, and, above all--which cost

e weeks previously of another little son. He had been cut short by the jealousy of one emperor from a career o

ion from the city and its interests a thought almost as terrible as death itself. Even the stoical and heroic Thrasea openly confessed that he should prefer death to exile. To a heart so affectionate, to a disposition so social, to a mind so active and ambitious as that of Seneca, it must have been doubly bitter to exchange the happiness of his family circle, the splendour

hing incomparably worse. No care was taken even to provide for their actual wants. Their very lives were not secure. Agrippa Posthumus and Nero, the brothers of the Emperor Caligula, had been so reduced by starvation that both of the wretched youths had been driven to support life by eating the materials with which their beds were stuffed. The Emperor Caius had once asked an exile, whom he had recalled from banishment, in what manner he had been accustomed to employ his time on the island. "I used," said the flatterer, "to pray that Tiberius might die, and that you might succeed.

order to prevent them from praying for his death, the mother and other relatives of the high priest used to supply

e inhabitants are described by the geographer Strabo as being "wilder than the wild beasts." It produced but little corn, and scarcely any fruit-trees. It abounded, indeed, in swarms of wild bees, but its very honey was bitter and unpalatable, from being infected with the acrid taste of the box-flowers on which they fed. N

, when earlies

n his face the

agai

, which rugged

iffs with idle w

t, no tilth th

er the winter-

ing her tender

b the luckless

acred fire, nor

e exile, and the

at first it did not fail him. Towards the close of his first year of exile he wrote the "Con

e, because so far from being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from her earliest years in all its varieties; and because his purpose was to conquer her grief, not to extenuate its causes. Those many miseries would indeed have been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear wretchedness. He will prove to her therefore that she has no cause to grieve either on his account, or on her own. Not on his--because he is happy among circumstances which others would think miserable and because he assures her with his own lips that not only is he not miserable, but that he can never be made so. Every one can secure his own happiness, if he learns to seek it, not in external circumstances, but in himself. He cannot indeed claim for himself the title of wise, for, if so, he would be the most fort

not attract some voluntary sojourners; even this precipitous and naked rock of Corsica, the hungriest, roughest, most savage, most unhealthy spot conceivable, had more foreigners in it than native inhabitants. The natural restlessness and mobility of the human mind, which arose from its aetherial origin, drove men to change from place to place. The colonies of different nations, sca

, or disembodied reason, or a divine interfusing spirit, or destiny, or an immutable series of connected causes--the result was that nothing, except our very meanest possessions, should depend on the will of another. Man's best gifts lie beyond the power of man either to give or to take away. This Univer

y lingering gaze on the other constellations, and consider their rising and setting and the spaces between them and the causes of their less and greater speed,--while I may contemplate the multitude of stars glittering throughout the heaven, some stationary, some revolving, some suddenly blazing forth, others dazzling th

can contain the crowd of glorious virtues; no exile severe into which you may go with such a reliance. When Brutus left Marcellus at Mitylene, he seemed to be himself going into exile because he left that

ving hour whole

arers and of

joy Marcellu

ith a senate

which sweeps the sky, and sea and land for birds, and animals, and fish; which eats to vomit and vomits to eat, and hunts over the whole world for that which after all it cannot even digest! They might satisfy their hunger with little, and they excite it with much. What harm can poverty inflict on a man who despises such excesses? Look at the god-like and heroic pov

he times are so changed that what we would now consider the poverty of an exile would then have been regarded as the patrimony of a prince. Protec

ates, who by entering a prison made it cease to be disgraceful? Cato was twice defeated in his candidature for the praetorship and consulship: well, this was the disgrace of those honours, and not of Cato. No one can be despised by another until he has learned to despise himself. The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his bro

l conversation, that unrestricted confidence, that electrical sympathy of heart and intellect that always existed between us, and that boyish glee wherewith your visits always affected me, yet, as you rise above the common herd of women in virtue, the simplicity, the purity of your life, you must abstain from feminine tears as you have done from all feminine follies. Consider how Cornelia, who had lost ten children by death, instead of wailing for her dead sons, thanked fortune that had made her sons Gracchi. Rutilia followed her son Cotta into exi

cus will cheer you up; the training of my little favourite Novatilla will be a duty which will assuage your sorrow. For your father's sake, too, though he is absent from you, you must moderate your lamentations. Above all,

am, while my mind, free from every care, has leisure for its own pursuits, and sometimes amuses itself with lighter studies, sometimes, eager for truth, soars upwards to the contemplation of its own nature, and the nature of the universe. It inquires first of all about the lands and their situation; then into the condition of the surrounding sea, its ebbings and flowings; then it carefully studies all this terror-fra

invested it, is a sketch of the little treatise which many have regarded as among the most

ggling with the

s grand attitude consistently maintained? Did his little raft of philosophy sink unde