At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person.  Must the Emperor be there?  May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lying courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress?  If he chooses thus to postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other counsellors will obey.  But the time will come when the worn-out boy will be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state.  The time comes one day.  Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellors, and bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to these cases which need an Emperor’s decision.  It is at that moment that we are to look upon him.

He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with boyish debauchery; his young fore head worn with the premature sensual wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night’s intemperance.  He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in the prisoner.

A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years.  This soldier is a tried veteran of the Praetorian cohorts.  He was selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for that purpose they have been inseparably bound.  But, as he leads that other through the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness which say he is no criminal to him.  Long since, the criminal has been the guardian of his keeper.  Long since, the keeper has cared for the prisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son’s affection.

They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye he glances keenly round the hall.  That flashing eye has ere now bade monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come.  The stately Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a subject’s salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him.  And when, then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old!  You see Paul make a subject’s formal reverence to Nero![K]

Let me do justice to the court which is to try him.  In that judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we have also the best of its wisdom.  By the dissolute boy, Nero, there stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his time; “Seneca the saint,” cry the Christians of the next century.  We will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good.  To this sage had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world.  This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when he