death. He heard his doom unmoved, and his bearing showed that he could practise, as well as preach, the principles of an exalted Stoicism. His veins were opened, and he expired in a warm bath, endeavouring, as his life ebbed away, to assuage by his exhortations the sorrow of his surrounding friends, and to confirm their virtue by his example. He died A.D. 65.—(Tacit. Annal., xv. 62.)
5. In regard to the character of Seneca opinions have been divided. By some he has been represented as vain and avaricious, as a time-server and a hypocrite. It is truer, as well as more charitable, to suppose that his faults were incident to his situation rather than indigenous to himself; that in circumstances the most inimical to virtue he preserved his virtue, if not spotless, still tolerably entire; and that, true to the principles of his philosophy, he succeeded in making the best of a very bad position. Stoicism, as expounded by Seneca, and as practised by him and other noble Romans, was the one redeeming feature in this, the worst of times. It inculcated a reliance on the wisdom, and an acquiescence in the decrees, of Providence; and at a time when the lives, the liberties, and the possessions of men were in the highest degree unstable and precarious, when the whole Roman Empire was broken-hearted and in despair, it taught that to overcome the fear of death was to stand superior to every earthly calamity; and that to be conscious of an inner and spiritual free-
