[Fratercula Arctica.] fratercula, Temm., Alca Arctica, Linn., may be taken as an example. Selby gives the following account of the habits of this bird, and is corroborated by others who have written on the subject: Although the puffin is found in very high latitudes, and its distribution through the arctic circle is extensive, it is only known to us as a summer visitant, and that from the south, making its first appearance in the vicinity of its breeding stations about the middle of April, and regularly departing between the 10th and 20th of August for the southern coasts of France, Spain, and other parts of Europe, where it passes the remainder of the year. It breeds in great numbers upon Priestholm Island, off the coast of Anglesea, on the Isle of Man, and most of the islands, indeed, of the English and Scottish coasts. Many resort to the Feroe islands, selecting such as are covered with a stratum of vegetable mould; and here they dig their own burrows, from there not being any rabbits to dispossess upon the particular islets they frequent. They commence this operation about the first week in May, and the hole is generally excavated to the depth of three feet, often in a curving direction, and occasionally with two entrances. When engaged in digging, which is principally performed by the males, they are sometimes so intent upon their work as to admit of being taken by hand, and the same may also be done during incubation. At this period I have frequently obtained specimens, by thrusting my arm into the burrow, though at the risk of receiving a severe bite from the powerful and sharp-edged bill of the old bird. At the farther end of this hole the single egg is deposited, which in size nearly equals that of a pullet, and, as Pennant observes, varies in form; in some instances one end being acute, and in others both equally obtuse. Its colour when first laid is white, but it soon becomes soiled and dirty, from its immediate contact with the earth; no materials being collected for a nest at the end of the burrow. The young are hatched after a month's incubation, and are then covered with a long blackish down above, which gradually gives place to the feathered plumage, so that at the end of a month or five weeks they are able to quit the burrow, and follow their parents to the open sea. Soon after this time, or about the second week in August, the whole leave our coasts, commencing their equatorial migration. At an early age the bill of this bird is small and narrow, scarcely exceeding that of the young Razor-bill at the same period of life; and not till after the second year does this member acquire its full development, both as to depth, colour, and its transverse furrows. In rocky places (Dover cliffs for instance), they deposit their single egg, as Montagu observes, in the holes and crevices. The length of the bird is about twelve inches. The half of the bill nearest the head is bluish; the rest red. The corners of the mouth are puckered into a kind of star. The legs and feet are orange. The plumage is black and white, with the exception of the cheeks and chin, which are sometimes grey. The young, pickled with spices, are by some considered dainties; they are also occasionally potted in the north. Sprats are supposed to be the principal food of the puffin; [Mergulus Melanoleucos.] Alle, Linn., is an example of the genus Mergulus of our countryman Ray. The Little Auk braves the inclemency of very high latitudes, and congregates in great flocks far within the arctic circle. The inhospitable coasts of Greenland and Spitzbergen are the dwelling-places of these birds, and thousands have been seen at Melville Island. In these dreary regions they are said to watch the motion of the ice, and, when it is broken up by storms, down they come in legions, crowding into every fissure to banquet on the crustaceans and other marine animals which there lie at their mercy. It can hardly be called an occasional visitant to this country, for those which have appeared here have been evidently exhausted birds, buffeted by storms, and driven by contrary winds far from the spot congenial to their habits. The little auk is between nine and ten inches in length; the bill is black, and the legs inclining to brown; the plumage is black and white, and in winter the front of the neck, which is black in summer, becomes whitish: the change takes place in the autumn. The bird lays only one egg, of a pale bluish-green, on the most inaccessible ledges of the precipices which overhang the ocean. Subgenus Phaleris. Alca psittacula, Pallas, may be taken as an illustration of The Perroquet Auk, Phaleris psittacula, Temminck, this subgenus. AUM 101 AUR Kamtchatka and other northern regions shelter these | for some time against the forces of Henry IV., who, after birds in abundance. They swim and dive admirably. the assassination of Henry III., succeeded to the crown, Stories are told to prove their unsuspicious character; and but seeing the bad state of the affairs of his party after the it is said that the natives place a dress with large sleeves battle of Ivry, he left the capital. After the surrender of near their holes and burrows, into which the artless birds, Paris to Henry IV., D'Aumale joined the Spaniards, who declared guilty of high-treason by the parliament of Paris, mistaking the sleeves aforesaid for their own retreats, creep had invaded the province of Picardy, for which he was and are taken. and sentenced to be broken on the wheel, which sentence was executed in effigy the 24th of July, 1595. D'Aumale, however, continued to reside abroad, chiefly in Flanders, enjoying the favour of the Spanish government. He died at Brussels in 1631, in his seventy-seventh year. (Lacretelle, Histoire de France pendant les Guerres de Religion.) About Midsummer, they lay one large egg, nearly of the size of a hen's, with brown or dusky spots on a whitish or yellowish ground. The Perroquet Auk is about eleven inches in length. From behind the eye a tuft of white feathers, which hang on either side of the neck, shoots forth. The head, neck, and upper parts are black, blending into ash-colour on the fore-part of the neck; the under parts from the breast are white; the legs are yellowish. În the old bird the bill is red, while the young one has it of a yellowish or dusky colour. AULIC COUNCIL (Reichshofrath), the name once given to the personal council of the emperor of Germany, which was distinct from the imperial chamber, or ReichsKammergericht, which was the supreme tribunal of the German empire. [See IMPERIAL CHAMBER.] The Aulic Council consisted of a president, a vice-president, the vicechancellor of the empire, and eighteen councillors, six of whom were required to be protestants: the votes of these six, when unanimous, were considered equal to those of all the rest. The nomination of the Aulic Councillors belonged to the emperor, who paid them, with the exception of the vicepresident, who was appointed by the archbishop of Mainz; they were drawn from two classes, nobles and civilians. The affairs which were under the exclusive jurisdiction of this court were of three sorts: 1. Feudal processes concerning the immediate feudatories of the emperor; 2. Those called reservata Cæsaris, including appeals from the hereditary dominions of the emperor; 3. All matters concerning the imperial jurisdiction in Italy, as the emperor was styled King of the Romans. The investitures of counties of the German empire were given by the Aulic Council. The Aulic Council did not interfere in the political or state affairs of the empire. The Council ceased at the death of every emperor; and the new emperor made a fresh appointment. The decisions of the Aulic Council were submitted to the emperor for his approbation, by which they became law. Pöllnitz, in the first volume of his Memoirs, compares the Aulic Council to the old French Parliament, with this difference, that the former could not make remonstrances to the sovereign, and did not register any other acts but its own decisions. At the extinction of the German empire by the renunciation of Francis II. in 1806, and the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine under the protection of the Emperor Napoleon, the Aulic Council ceased to exist. There is, however, an Aulic Council at Vienna for the affairs of the war department of the Austrian empire: it is called Hofkriegsrath, and consists of twenty-five councillors. The members also of the various boards or chancellories of state for the affairs of Bohemia, Hungary, and Transylvania, Italy, and Gallicia, are styled Aulic Councillors, but are inferior in rank to the councillors of state, of which latter two sit at the head of each board. (Austria as it is, London, 1827.) AULIS. [See EGRIPOS.] AULUS GELLIUS. [See GELLIUS.] AUMALE, CHARLES DE LORRAINE, DUC D', sprung from a branch of the ducal house of Lorraine, which had settled in France about the beginning of the sixteenth century, when it was possessed of the fief of Aumale. His father, Claude d'Aumale, was governor of Burgundy, and uncle to Henry Duke of Guise, the head of the League. [See GUISE.] Charles d'Aumale entered into the party of the League, which, under pretence of suppressing the Huguenots, aspired to the supreme power. He was the means of subjecting Picardy and Normandy to the League. After the assassination of the Duke of Guise, in December, 1588, D'Aumale and the Duke of Mayenne became the heads of their party. D'Aumale in 1589 took possession of Paris, from which King Henry III. had been obliged to retire, and he dissolved the parliament by force, and sent its members to the Bastille. Shortly afterwards he marched from Paris with 10,000 men to attack the town of Senlis, He still defended Paris but was defeated by La Noue. AUNIS, one of the former provinces or military governments of France; and remarkable as being the smallest of on the N. by Poitou, from which it was separated by the those divisions. It was bounded by the ocean on the W., river Sèvre (distinguished as the Sèvre Niortaise), and on the E. and S. by the province of Saintonge. It is watered by the Sèvre just mentioned and the Charente. These rivers, rising in the more inland provinces, pass through Aunis in their course to the ocean. The soil is generally dry, but it produces corn, and grapes, from which good wine and brandy are made; while the marshy tracts afford pasturage for a considerable quantity of cattle. There is little wood. The salt marshes, which are considerable, yield salt of the best quality; but their exhalations are prejudicial to the health of the inhabitants. The maritime situation of the district, and the excellent ports which it possesses, render it commercial and wealthy. The chief article of export is brandy: but the cod-fishery, and the colonial and coasting trade employ several vessels. The coast abounds in shell-fish, of species that are not very common; and the mussel-fishery (pêche des moules) brings in considerable profit. The salt is of three kinds, white, grey, and reddish; the first is the most esteemed. The maps differ considerably in giving the boundaries of Aunis. Some contract the province so far as to exclude the town of Rochefort, which is on the northern bank of the Charente; while others make the Charente the southern boundary of Aunis, and so include Rochefort. The map given in the Atlas to the Encyclopédie Méthodique extends the province still farther south to the Gironde; for the district of Brouageais, which formerly appertained to Saintonge, was dismembered from that province and joined to Poitou and Guienne, together with the islands of Ré, Aix, Aunis, which thus included all the sea coast between and Oleron. The district of Brouageais seems to be productive in salt, as also the isle of Oleron. The isle of Ré produces wine; but is ill-provided with wood, and is not fruitful in corn. The chief town of Aunis was La Rochelle; and to this we may add Rochefort and Marennes as next in import ance. The province is now comprehended in the department of Charente Inférieure (Lower Charente). (Malte Brun; Encyclopédie Méthodique, Géographie Moderne,' article Aunis.) AURANTIA'CEÆ, or the orange tribe, are dicotyledonous polypetalous plants, with dark-green jointed leaves, filled with fragrant essential oil collected in little transparent dots, and a superior ovary changing to a succulent berry, the rind of which is also filled with fragrant essential oil. No natural order can well be more strictly defined than the orange tribe, and none have properties more uniform and definite. It consists of trees or shrubs found exclusively in the temperate or tropical parts of the Old World, and unknown in a wild state in America; their flowers are some shade of yellow. They principally differ from each usually odoriferous, and their fruits subacid; the rind has other in the number and proportion or arrangement of their stamens, in the number of cells or seeds in the fruit, and in the texture of the rind of the fruit, which does not always pull off as in the orange, the lemon, the citron, and their congeners, but is frequently a mere skin inclosing the pulp. The natural order which is most nearly allied to the orange tribe is that called Xanthoxyleæ, into which the oranges pass by their climbing genus, Lavanga, and which differ principally in having a hard dry fruit which splits into several carpels. [Aurantiaceæ.] Common orange. 1. A flower with its calyx, corolla, stamens, and style. 2. A portion of the stamens. 3. An ovary cut through transversely. 4. A fruit cut through in the same direction. . AURE D', one of the Four Valleys' (Quatre Vallées) in Upper Armagnac. [See ARMAGNAC, and PYRE'NE'ES, HAUTES.] AURE, a small river in Normandy, rising near the town of Mortagne, in the department of Orne, and flowing in a direction a little to the north of east, until it joins the Eure not far from Dreux. As its whole course is not much more than forty miles, it would not deserve notice, but for the circumstance that its stream was interrupted and its waters swallowed up in deep pits or abysses which occurred in its course. It is supposed by Desmarest (in the article 'Aure, in the Encyclopédie Methodique, Geographie Physique), that this absorption of the waters was consequent upon the accumulation of mud in the bed of the river, which caused the waters to overflow, and to work out for themselves subterranean channels. But whatever may have been the cause of the phenomenon, the mills on the stream were materially injured by the frequent failure of the water; and this injury led to the application of a remedy. The bed of the river was cleansed, the mud which had accumulated taken away, the pits by which the water had been absorbed stopped up, and the orifices by which the water so absorbed in winter issued forth again, were made to empty themselves into the stream. (Encyclopédie Méthodique.) AURE'LIA, in entomology, a name given to that state of an insect which is between the caterpillar and its final transformation, and is commonly called a chrysalis or pupa. The term aurelia was first applied by the Romans, and that of chrysalis by the Greeks, to certain butterfly pupae which have a golden colour. In England, those of the peacock (Vanessa lö) and the small tortoiseshell (Vanessa Urtica) butterflies are beautiful examples, and may be seen in abundance hanging to the common stinging nettles about the latter end of the month of June. [For further account, see PUPA.] AURELIANUS, LUCIUS DOMITIUS, is commonly said to have been born at Sirmium, in Pannonia; but the place of his birth is not distinctly ascertained, nor do we find the date of it exactly stated. His father was a husbandman; his mother priestess of a temple of the Sun. It was said, probably by the flattery of later times, that his subsequent elevation was presaged by a variety of prodigies and omens. At an early age he enlisted as a common soldier; tall, handsome, and strong, skilful and diligent in all athletic and military exercises, temperate in his habits, and of acute intellect, he rose from his humble station to the highest military offices, during the reigns of Valerian and Claudian. It is a trifling circumstance, but not unworthy of notice, as illustrative of the qualities looked for in a general at that time, that the boys used to sing to the following effect in praise of his personal prowess :'Mille, mille, mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus; Unus homo mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus; Mille, mille, mille vivat, qui mille mille occidit. Tantum vini habet nemo quantum fudit sanguinis. He was distinguished by the soldiers from another Aurelian, also a tribune, by the characteristic epithet 'sword in hand' (manu ad ferrum). As an officer, his discipline was strict even to severity. He wrote to his lieutenant, If you wish to become tribune, or to live, keep the soldiery in order. Let no one steal another man's fowl, nor touch his sheep. Let none plunder grapes, nor injure corn-fields. Let none exact oil, salt, or wood. Let each be content with his own rations. Let each get rich from the booty of the enemy, not from the tears of the provincials,' &c. After On the death of Claudius, honourably distinguished by the appellation of Gothic, A.D.270, Quintillus, brother of Claudius, assumed the purple, but resigned it by a voluntary death at the end of seventeen days, on hearing that the legions of the Danube had raised Aurelian to the imperial dignity. The new emperor suppressed an inroad of the Suevi and Sarmatæ, and compelled them to retreat to the northern side of the Danube; but he withdrew the Roman troops from the province of Dacia, and thus doubly strengthened the frontier of the empire by rendering the Danube its boundary, and by abandoning a district too distant to be easily defended, and too thinly peopled to defend itself. While thus engaged, Aurelian was recalled to the north of Italy, by an invasion of a German tribe, the Alemanni or Marcomanni. various alternations of success, among which we may notice a battle near Placentia, in which the Roman troops were defeated, the force of the barbarians was entirely destroyed, A.D. 271. Aurelian then visited Rome, punished with a ferocious severity the authors of a sedition which had disturbed the city, and repaired the walls, including an additional space within their limits. The disturbance at Rome was owing to the 'Monetarii,' a body of men explained by Facciolati to be the coiners, a set numerous and united enough to raise seditions; to support which, he refers to the passage of Eutropius (lib. ix.). Aur. Victor also says that the monetarii rebellaverunt,' got up a rebellion. These monetarii were apparently the persons who managed the public coinage, which they had probably debased for the sake of their own profit. We know that Aurelian afterwards issued a new and improved coinage. See Gibbon (ch. xi. end), who puts this rebellion after Aurelian's triumph. Vopiscus puts it after the defeat of the Alemanni; Eutropius and Aur. Victor do not fix any time. Aurelian at this time was master only of the central por tion of the Roman world. Under the weak and contemptible princes who preceded the energetic reigns of Claudius and Aurelian, a multitude of contenders for empire started up, who fell one before another, or maintained, in their several districts, a short and anomalous independence. Of these, the last and most powerful were Tetricus and Zenobia, who respectively held the extreme west and east of the Roman empire. Spain, Gaul, and Britain owned, in name, the authority of Tetricus; but he was little more than a pageant of a monarch, in seeming possession of a power which he could not wield and dared not resign. He himself invited Aurelian to relieve him from this splendid misery, and betrayed his own army into a defeat near Châlons, in Champagne, while he himself, with a few friends, took refuge with his more fortunate competitor. Spain and Britain acknowledged the victor. Gibbon places these events in the year 271, contrary to most other historians, who make them subsequent to the fall of Zenobia. (See Vopiscus, cap. 32.) The west being secured, Aurelian betook himself to that war, by the successful issue of which he is best known; the reduction of the great, flourishing, and short-lived city of Palmyra. [See PALMYRA, ODENATHUS, ZENOBIA.] Odenathus, who had raised his native city to this height of power, was dead, and succeeded by his widow, the celebrated Zenobia, a woman of accomplished tastes and masculine talents. The march of Aurelian was busy as well as toilsome. In his route through Illyria and Thrace he met and vanquished some of the barbarian hordes who infested the frontier provinces of the Roman empire. Passing through Byzantium, he traversed Bithynia. Ancyra (in Galatia) submitted; Tyana was besieged and taken; and Antioch opened its gates after a slight skirmish_at Daphne. This is the statement of Vopiscus; but Eutropius speaks of a severe battle at Antioch, and makes no mention of that fought at Emesa. The hostile armies met at Emesa, in Syria, where Aurelian gained a decisive victory, and continued his march to Palmyra unopposed, except by the constant attacks of the Syrian robbers, from whom much inconvenience was sustained in crossing the deserts. The resistance of the city did credit to its warlike fame. Vopiscus has preserved a letter from Aurelian himself, in which he complains that the Romans talk of his waging war with a woman, as if she fought with her own unassisted strength, and continues, 'It cannot be told what preparation for war, what store of arrows, spears, stones, is here. No part of the wall but is occupied by two or three balista, and there are engines to cast fire. She does not fight like a woman, nor like one who fears punishment. But I trust that the gods will assist the republic, who never have been wanting to our undertakings. He offered favourable terms of capitulation-an honourable retreat to Zenobia, and the reservation of their rights to the Palmyrenians; but a haughty answer was returned by the queen, in the Syrian language, reminding him that Cleopatra, from whom she was descended, refused to live except as a queen, and threatening him with the promised help of the Persians, Saraceni, and Armenians. But Zenobia was disappointed in her expectations about these auxiliaries; and the skilful commissariat arrangements of the emperor obviated the difficulties of procuring subsistence for an army in the inhospitable deserts which surround the oasis of Palmyra. Zenobia felt resistance to be hopeless, when Probus, to whom the re-conquest of Egypt had been entrusted, brought his victorious army to the assistance of the emperor; and she tried to escape, but was intercepted on her way to Persia, and brought to the Roman camp. The soldiers clamoured loudly for her death. Aurelian refused to shed female blood; but he took his revenge on those who had directed her counsels, among whom perished the celebrated Longinus, who had been Zenobia's instructor in Grecian literature. The city surrendered soon after the capture of its mistress, A.D. 273, and was treated with comparative clemency, being neither plundered nor destroyed. Aurelian was already returned into Europe, when he heard that the Palmyrenians had revolted, and massacred the small garrison of six hundred archers whom he had left in charge of their city. He returned in wrath, and exceeded even his usual ferocity in avenging this ill-judged insult. There is a letter extant written by him to Ceionius Bassus, in which he says, 'The sword must go no farther; enough of the Palmyrenians are slain and cut to pieces. We have not spared women; we have slain infants, old men, husbandmen; to whom then shall we leave the lands and the city? Let those who remain be spared; for we believe that so few may be amended by the punishment of so many. He goes on to give directions for the restoration of the temple of his favourite deity, the Sun, at Palmyra, which had been damaged by the third legion. 6 [Gold. Brit. Mus. Double the diameter.] to some), after reigning from five and a half to six years, according to Vopiscus and Aur. Victor. Gibbon, without quoting his authority, makes it four years and nine months. He left a single daughter, whose descendants remained at Rome when Vopiscus wrote. Aurelian is not ill-described by Eutropius as of a character necessary on some occasions rather than loveable on any; but harsh on all. Yet he had many qualities noble and valuable in a ruler: he was frugal in his expenses, tempe rate in his pleasures, moderate in providing for friends and adherents, strict in preserving good order, and resolute in repressing peculation, and punishing those who grew rich on peculation and the spoils of the provinces. But these good qualities were obscured by a temper naturally harsh, and trained by a long and exclusive course of military service into total carelessness for the sufferings of others; insomuch, that the Emperor Diocletian, himself not over inclined to compassion, said on that account that Aurelian was better suited to command an army than an empire. (Vopiscus, in the Historia Augusta; Eutropius; Aur. Victor; Gibbon, c. xi.; Crevier, Histoire des Empereurs Romains, vol. vi.) Vopiscus informs us (cap. i.) that his Life of Aurelian was founded on Greek authorities (there having been no Latin history of Aurelian before his), and on the Journals and Campaigns of the emperor, which were then kept in the Ulpian Library at Rome. AURELIUS, MARCUS (or, as he is called on his medals and elsewhere, Marcus Antoninus), was the son of Annius Verus and Domitia Calvilla. Verus traced his pedigree to Numa, and Domitia hers to Malennius, a Salentine prince; the fathers of both were consuls. Aurelius was born on Mount Cœlius, in Rome, on the 26th of April, A.D. 121, and was named Annius Verus. Hadrian, with whom he was a favourite from infancy, familiarly called him Verissimus, a distinction which he even then merited. To his natural disposition, habits, and early acquirements, which it is honourable to the emperor to have perceived and cherished he owed his adoption into the Aurelian family by Antoninus Pius, who was himself adopted by Hadrian, upon condition that he should adopt Annius Verus, and the son of a deceased favourite, L. Ceionius Commodus (called, after his adoption by Hadrian, Ælius Verus Cæsar), who was to have been his successor; this son was named Lucius Verus. [See VERUS.] There was policy, as well as family connexion, in these proceedings. The father of Aurelius dying while he was young, his grandfather took charge of his education, and gave him every advantage which the age he lived in could afford. We learn from himself that he had masters in every science and polite art, whose names and qualifica tions he has most gratefully recorded, modestly attributing all his acquirements to their instruction and example. (See After this ceremony the emperor visited Gaul and Illy- Book I. of the Meditations.) They were all more or less ricum; but his stay was short, for in a few months from the remarkable for rigid observance of the rules of morality, date of it we find him leading an army against Persia, to command of temper, polite conversation, and courteous revenge the defeat and degradation of Valerian. On his manners, and were all afterwards rewarded according to march between Heraclea and Byzantium he was assassinated, their merits and just expectations, two of them being raised in consequence of the treachery of one of his secretaries, to the consulate. These men, therefore, were not only named Mnestheus, whom he had threatened with punish-tutors, but models upon which the more perfect character ment; and the emperor's threats were known seldom to be of Aurelius was formed; the foundation of which, however, made in vain. The secretary forged a list of names-those he piously says was laid by his parents. From what he had of the chief officers of the army ostensibly devoted to death; heard of his father, he learned modesty and manly firmness; and the restless character of Aurelian caused the fraud to be from his mother, piety, generosity, and simplicity of life; readily believed, and promptly acted on. The conspirators from his grandfather, virtuous disposition of mind, and Aurelian was recalled a third time to the East by a rebellion in Egypt, excited by Firmus, a merchant who had acquired immense wealth by commerce in India. This was immediately quelled by the emperor's presence; and having now cleared the Roman empire of all rivals and pretenders to independence, and restored it to its antient limits, he returned to Rome, where he celebrated his various victories with a triumph of more than usual magnificence. The details will be found in Vopiscus, chap. 33, &c. habitual command of temper, &c. For the art of government, and the manners that give dignity to a ruler, he afterwards studied the public and private conduct of Antoninus Pius. Most of his teachers were Stoics. One of the most distinguished of them, Rusticus, procured him a copy of the works of Epictetus, which confirmed his natural inclination to Stoicism, and became his inseparable companions; he delighted in commenting upon them, and thanked the gods for furnishing him with a manual from which he could collect wherewith to conduct his life with honour to himself and advantage to his country. The life and writings of the emperor rank him, indeed, amongst the best teachers and brightest ornaments of the stoical school, and have led his biographers to expatiate upon its merits. . It would be out of place here to do more than to acknowledge the general excellence of its moral rules, and their universal application as a system of moral philosophy to the use of men of all ranks and conditions in society. From this circumstance, Stoicism had more followers than any other philosophical sect. Much has been said of its extreme severity: perhaps from some of its followers having overstrained its rules, and adopted practices more rigid than are consistent with nature and conformable to reason; but such men are ascetics, and not Stoics. But, admitting its rules to be laid down in an extreme manner, they stand upon the same footing as certain theories in the exact sciences that find their natural limits in practice. In the lives of Epictetus and Aurelius, the just limits of the rules of Stoicism, and the proof of their utility to men of all conditions in life, may be found. They were equally adapted to the purposes of these two men, who may be called the extreme links of the social chain. The one was the slave of a man freed from every slavery but that of his own vices by Nero, living in the worst of times, with the worst examples immediately before his eyes, and trusting to chance and his own exertions for education. The other was not only a freeman, but born to command, and enjoying every advantage; yet there is nothing in the lives and practices of these two men contrary to nature and social order, and little or nothing more to be required of either of them than what they performed. They were equally remarkable for moral excellence and virtuous conduct in every respect; and they have each left us the rules by which they governed themselves. [See ARRIAN, and EPICTETUS.] The work of Aurelius, which is divided into twelve books, and written in Greek, is generally known by the name of his Meditations. There has been much unnecessary cavilling about its Greek title, Tov sig avrov, variously rendered of and to himself, or concerning himself. It is a private note-book, kept for a purpose that the critics would have been better employed in pointing out. Aurelius accomplished the arduous task of passing through a life of extraordinary difficulty and temptation with unblemished character. His son entirely failed in it, not from disability, for he was educated as his father was, and showed every inclination to walk in his steps, till he became free from his father's observation and control; till then he must have given satisfaction, for his father thanks the gods that he had found proper tutors for his children. We must therefore infer that education and natural inclination are not of themselves sufficient to keep a man in the paths of virtue without an unremitting discipline. The severest and most important rule of Stoicism relates to self-government, and enjoins daily and hourly examination of all our thoughts, words, and actions. This golden rule Commodus neglected. Aurelius always observed it, as his book proves; it was his monitor to keep him to his duty; it fully illustrates the efficacy of stoical discipline, and its effect upon the man himself gives it its peculiar value. Besides this, it contains the history of his education, and a collection of rules, dogmas, theorems, comments, and opinions, put down as they were suggested by passing events, reading, or conversation; sometimes they appear to be preparatives for particular cases in which be expected to be called upon to act or decide. They form no regular series, nor have they any relative order, but they all tend to the purposes of morals, discipline, and self-government. When not new, they are placed in a new light. They may be considered as a supplement to Epictetus, and the two together form the best code of moral discipline left to us by the antient philosophers. This book was first edited in Greek and Latin by Xylander, Ziirich, 1558, then by M. Casaubon in 1643, much improved; but still more by Gataker, Camb. 1652, with some valuable tables of reference. It was re-edited by G. Stanhope, with Dacier's life, Lond. 1697, 1704. An edition by J. M. Schulz was published at Schleswig, 1802; and another by Coray, Paris, 1816. The English translations are by M. Casaubonseven editions between 1634 and 1702; the reader is confused by his explanations of his own language as he goes on: by J. Collier, remarkable for its vulgarity: by J. Thomson, 1747. Anonymous, Glasgow, 1749, harshly literal; and by R. Graves, 1792, said to be the best, but very bad. The events of Aurelius's life are marked by wise and prudent conduct. He passed through all the offices usually given to persons of his rank and pretensions, and as he most punctually attended to his duty in them, he obtained those facilities as a man of business for which he was remarkable. In his fifteenth year the daughter of Ceionius Commodus was betrothed to him by the desire of Hadrian, but the union was dissolved by Antoninus Pius after Hadrian's death. His adoption by Antoninus Pius took place in his eighteenth year, when he was named Marcus Alius Aurelius. After the death of Hadrian he married his cousin Faustina, daughter of Antoninus Pius, a lady whose conduct was not calculated to promote his happiness, and though he had ample cause, he refused to divorce her. Upon the death of his new father in 161, he took the name of Antoninus, and immediately associated Lucius Verus with himself as partner in the empire: he also gave him his daughter Lucilla in marriage. This last and highest office Aurelius accepted at the request of the senate, much against his inclination; but having accepted it, he never suffered his fondness for study and philosophic retirement to interfere with his public duty. A troublesome reign ensued, beginning with inundations, earthquakes, famine, and pestilence, causing universal distress, which it required extraordinary exertion to alleviate. The life of a man whose object was peace was almost entirely occupied by war, owing to former emperors having conquered more countries than they could unite in one empire. This was only making as many enemies, open and concealed, as conquests. The safety of the empire, however, now depended upon its keeping all its provinces, for if its inability to do so could be proved, common cause would be made against it, and its destruction would follow. Hence it became the duty of Aurelius to put down the insurrections that broke out in all quarters. This he did by activity, fortitude, and a prudent choice of his lieutenants: he was everywhere victorious; and he took the best means in his power to make his victories effective, by showing mercy and clemency to the conquered, endeavouring there by to prove that he was a ruler under whose sway they might live in peace if they pleased. But the spirit of liberty and independence on the frontiers could not be suppressed: all that Aurelius could do was to maintain the integrity of the empire during his reign, leaving the same hopeless task to his successors. |