sadness which pervaded the spirit of Aurelius, and the anxious efforts to find a ground of consolation and serenity amidst the doubts which cannot be repressed. In the true spirit of the ancient world, death is regarded by him as the great evil, the dark uncertainty, the irresolvable ænigma. We are not among those who imagine that Christianity has lifted entirely the veil from this mighty mystery. We are forcibly struck with the silence which Christ maintained respecting the secrets of another life. We have no belief in the ingenuity which would extort from parables and figurative expressions dogmatic teachings upon spiritual mysteries. Possibly they are among the things which it is impossible to reveal to us, because, as we can only receive what we possess a rational groundin our mental constitution for comprehending, we could not receive information respecting a state of which we possess no analogous conceptions. It must be experienced in order to become intelligible, and any declarations concerning it would be as incomprehensible in our present existence as an unknown language. The mode of existence after death is absolutely unknown ;-acquainted as we are with the general structure of the universe, we can form no conception of the locality of the departed; we possess no experience-no rational ground in our existing conceptions as the condition necessary for comprehending spiritual existence. In itself, death is as veiled a mystery to us as it was to the ancient pagan. We are content that it should be so, for we have none of that unhealthy disposition (so characteristic of the prevailing religious notions,) which is uneasy at any ignorance or apparent indefiniteness upon points lying in a sphere where, from the very nature of things, our knowledge must stop, and which, not comprehending the distinction between Reason and the Understanding, feels its shallow faith oozing away, unless it can reduce every matter to the tangible form of some dogma comprehensible within the narrow domain of the understanding alone. We can only regard with amazement, the self-confident levity exhibited in those representations and details of another life which are given by many, upon the authority of the Bible, as they affirm, but really upon their own imaginary interpretations, based upon notions drawn necessarily from the only sphere of experience possible to them. But with

this darkness, what light does Christianity shed in another direction upon the grave! Assuring us of the reality of a glorious existence, it enables us to face death with the calm triumph of a conviction that it is only the transitionprocess to a higher form of life. Refusing to gratify a curiosity which has not the capacity to receive the gratification, even if it were offered, Christianity assures us that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have an eternal mansion beyond these transitory scenes; and inspiring us with this victorious confidence, it makes even the dissolving tongue vocal with the triumphant pæan-"O! Death, where is thy sting? O! Grave, why is thy victory?"

But Aurelius felt no such confidence in the contemplation of death. The belief in immortality is an ineradicable instinct in the human breast; no nation has been without its doctrines of another life; all humanity naturally recoils from the thought of annihilation. Christianity did nothing in teaching men that they were immortal; -it was a belief which had been the heir-loom of the race from the beginning. But when the reflective reason became exercised upon the data of the popular faith, the philosophic enquirer might well feel a shade of gloom at the utter uncertainty, as far as any irrefutable proofs were concerned, which enveloped the destiny of man beyond the grave. Still, only the few were competent to doubt. What Christianity did in this respect was to place the universal belief upon a new foundation, and to invest death and the future existence in totally different colours. Startling is the evidence of the new and mighty power at work, introducing a vitality of mysterious origin into the midst of the decaying life of the ancient world, which is afforded by the contrast between the manner in which the famous martyrs of Lyons-some of them slaves—regarded death and futurity, and the sophisms wherewith their illustrious sovereign sought to veil to himself the uneasiness which those solemn topics excited. We find him, for instance, reasoning thus with himself;-that to depart from life is nothing dreadful, if there are gods, for they will not involve one in evil; and that if there are no gods, or if they exercise no care over human affairs, why should one desire to live in a world destitute of gods, or abandoned by Providence? But that since there are gods who

care for man, who have placed it in his own power to avoid what is evil, who were sufficiently wise, good, and powerful to have so arranged the universe that good and evil should not fall indiscriminately upon the good and bad alike, he concludes that those things which do thus happen to all without moral distinction, as honour and disgrace, pleasure and pain, riches and poverty, life and death, are things indifferent, which are to be regarded as neither good nor evil in themselves.* Hence his employment of the old Stoic sophism, that the longest and the shortest lives are equal, because in either case only that can be lost which is possessed, namely, the present moment, for the past and the future are neither of them yours, and therefore you can lose neither. Throughout his books, the vanity of life, the fleeting nature of the world, are perpetually recurring themes; death is only a resolution into the component elements of the universe ;† he who fears it, must fear either extinction or a change of sensation, but if no sensation remains thereafter, there is nothing further to fear,-if a different sensational nature is acquired, one becomes another animal, and so will not cease to live. How hollow a consolation to a being, the very value of whose existence is involved in the possession of his personal identity! Again, he asks, how is it that the gods, who have arranged everything with the utmost propriety and benevolence to man, suffer the pious to die and perish utterly? His reply is, that if it is so, it must be just; if it is not just we may believe that we shall find the gods to have ordered it otherwise.||

The impression made upon us by all that Aurelius says, is, that he rather submitted to death as an inevitable necessity, which would not exist were it not consonant with the plan of the universe, as arranged by the wisest and best Providence; and hence, that the wise man, trusting to that Providence, pursuing duty, and acquiescing in what is inevitable, will tranquilly await the end of lifewhatever may be the disposition made of him beyond. To those who objected against belief in, and worship of, the gods because they have never been seen, he thinks it enough to answer, that we have never seen our soul, and yet that we honour it, and that the gods are actually

* II. 11, IV. 39, VI. 10, 44. † II. 14. ‡ II. 17. § VIII. 58. || XII. 5.

With

known from the visible effects of their power.* regard to the famous reference to the Christians, in the passage where he says that the prepared soul should be ready for extinction, or for continuance upon its dissolution from the body, and that this preparedness should proceed from individual judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as is the case with the Christians, but reasonably, solemnly, in a manner calculated to persuade others, and not with tragic display;† there appears to be some doubt whether the clause mentioning the Christians, be not an interpolation; at all events, the allusion forms too slender a thread upon which to hang any argument. If it is genuine, it would only confirm the correctness of the position towards the Christians which we have already assigned to the emperor.

In Aurelius, expired the last effort of Paganism and Grecian Philosophy to realize the ideal of a perfect man; and obvious as are the defects which we detect in the result, we cannot deny that the long line of so-called Christian emperors who filled the throne of the Cæsars, presents no one who, compared in all respects with the man we have been considering, would not suffer by the comparison. And if we find this, moreover, to be the case with regard to the majority of even the princes who have reigned in modern Christian Europe, we may read in the history of Aurelius, an additional lesson of the important truth that God never suffers real nobleness and earnestness of character to be lost; but that where it has been faithfully cultivated and exhibited, according to one's light and opportunity, Providence honours it in the records of history, and will even dignify the noble and earnest pagan by presenting him in those records as a reproof and example to the negligent Christian, who is the more unworthy in proportion to the magnitude of his privileges.

* XII. 28. + XI. 3.

This is the conjecture of Eichstädt.-Exercit. Antonin. III.

Conf. August. De Civ. Dei. L. V. c. 12. "Quibus moribus antiqui Romani meruerunt ut Deus verus, quamvis non eum colerent, eorum augeret imperium.'

ART. V.-ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.

Five Years in an English University: by CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED, late Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. New-York: 1852.

OXFORD and CAMBRIDGE-venerable names! How many associations do the very words conjure up! Their remote antiquity-(your true Oxonian is content with no later origin for his beloved Alma Mater than the times of Alfred the Great, and your genuine Cantab will not yield a jot on the score of age for his); their venerable piles of buildings, which look as if they never could have been new; the host of worthies who, generation after generation, have mused and studied within their walls-who have there achieved an immortality of fame, or, at least, there laid the foundation upon which, in after life, they have raised a structure of world-wide reputation and renown; all seem to invest them with a dignity and interest which the further lapse of time will but increase and deepen. To an American, particularly, these features of the two great English Universities must be very impressive. Accustomed to the stir and bustle that pervades every corner of his own country-to the glare, the spruceness and newness of everything at home-where old buildings are constantly being pulled down, or (as the phrase goes)" done up "-and where, amidst the rumbling thunder of railway trains and the hoarse-panting of steam engines, Literature, like Truth, "hath little say "-the profound air of academic repose which marks these ancient seats of learning, must strike him with a sort of solemn awe, somewhat akin to that which one would experience who should suddenly turn from a hot, crowded street, into "the long-drawn aisles" of some cool, dimlylighted Gothic temple. Here trade, commerce, manufactures, machinery and steam-valuable and essential, but still unlovely and unæsthetic elements of civilization-the prose back-ground of life-have no place; there is nothing for them to do here. Here is the empire of mind-of pure intellect--in its widest range and most unfettered condition; not "practically applied" to the performance of feats of political jugglery--the framing of blundering and needless statutes, or reckless tinkering with the con