The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were in fact his private diary, they are a noble soliloquy with his own heart, an honest examination of his own conscience; there is not the slightest trace of their having been intended for any eye but his own.  In them he was acting on the principle of St. Augustine:  “Go up into the tribunal of thy conscience, and set thyself before thyself.”  He was ever bearing about—­

     “A silent court of justice in himself,
      Himself the judge and jury, and himself
      The prisoner at the bar.”

And writing amid all the cares and distractions of a war which he detested, he averted his eyes from the manifold wearinesses which daily vexed his soul, and calmly sat down to meditate on all the great qualities which he had observed, and all the good lessons that he might have learnt from those who had instructed his boyhood, and surrounded his manly years.

And what had he learnt?—­learnt heartily to admire, and (we may say) learnt to practise also?  A sketch of his first book will show us.  What he had gained from his immediate parents we have seen already, and we will make a brief abstract of his other obligations.

From “his governor”—­to which of his teachers this name applies we are not sure—­he had learnt to avoid factions at the races, to work hard, and to avoid listening to slander; from Diognetus, to despise frivolous superstitions, and to practise self-denial; from Apollonius, undeviating steadiness of purpose, endurance of misfortune, and the reception of favours without being humbled by them; from Sextus of Chaeronea (a grandson of the celebrated Plutarch), tolerance of the ignorant, gravity without affectation, and benevolence of heart; from Alexander, delicacy in correcting others; from Severus, “a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hope, and, to believe that I am beloved of my friends;” from Maximus, “sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining;” from Alexander the Platonic, “not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations.”

To one or two others his obligations were still more characteristic and important.  From Rusticus, for instance, an excellent and able man, whose advice for years he was accustomed to respect, he had learnt to despise sophistry and display, to write with simplicity, to be easily pacified, to be accurate, and—­an inestimable benefit this, and one which tinged the colour of his whole life—­to become acquainted with the Discourses of Epictetus.  And from his adoptive father, the great Antoninus Pius, he had derived advantages still more considerable.  In him he saw the example of a sovereign and statesman firm, self-controlled, modest, faithful, and even tempered; a man who despised flattery and hated meanness;