activity of Cæsar, who was both a warrior and a negociator, a statesman, an orator, and a writer, was the principal cause of his success in life. Pliny relates, that he would read and write at the same time, and dictate at once to several secretaries in as many different languages while giving audience to ambassadors.

Cicero, whose genius placed him on an equality with Cæsar, who was continually entrusted with the business of the state and of private individuals, found, amid troubles and storms, amid the occupations and vicissitudes of life, leisure sufficient to acquire a thorough knowledge of all the doctrines of the philosophic sects of Greece. During a career of such prodigious activity, he composed numerous works of different kinds, on almost all the subjects interesting to man, subjects on which, as it is evident, he had profoundly meditated.

Augustus, as we are informed by Suetonius, was extremely assiduous in study, especially in the study of eloquence, and had from an early age led a very laborious life. Such was his passion for the sciences, that he always conversed during meals on matters of erudition. He also cultivated poetry, and usually composed while bathing. In this manner he employed every moment.

He was

accustomed to digest and commit to writing all his addresses to the senate, the people, and the army, nay, even every important communication that he had to make to his wife. He forbade his family and his grand-daughters to do or say anything in secret that was not fit to be recorded in the family journal.*

Vespasian's time, after he became emperor, was thus divided: he always rose early and before day-light after reading the letters and looking over the memorials directed to him, he received his friends, and dressed himself while conversing with them: he then attended to any other business he had to transact, afterwards took a walk or ride, and rested some time: he bathed before he went to table, and during his repasts he conversed in the kindest and most affable manner with those about him; thus making intervals of useful recreation and well employed leisure succeed his numerous avocations.

Alexander Severus, who was constantly intent

*The practice of keeping a family journal, in which the father should inscribe the most important acts of the lives of his children, and which should be read to them at the end of every year, would be a highly moral domestic institution, and well calculated to produce the best effects.

on the prosperity of his people, devoted the whole day to the transaction of public affairs and the administration of strict justice to individuals. He then sought recreation at night from the cares of government in the society of the best and most enlightened persons, whom he cautiously selected for admission to his familiarity, in order to consult the one and to gain information from the other.

A succeeding emperor, Julian, who considered the sovereign power as an extension of his means of doing good to mankind, and who acted consistently with this principle, equally desirous, from the natural bent of his disposition, and from policy, to diminish the number of his enemies, and to augment that of his friends, multiplied himself, in a manner, by his activity. Passionately fond of the Greeks, imbued by daily and nightly study with the spirit of their writers, an enthusiastic admirer of Homer and Plato, eager and insatiable of knowledge, endowed with that kind of imagination which is captivated by every thing extraordinary, having moreover an ardent soul, and that energy which can urge forward better than check-he embraced, he applied himself to every thing. When mortally wounded, at the age of thirty-two years, he beheld with serenity the approach of his last hour; and the

recollection of his life shed a lustre over his death: "My life has been short," said he, "but my days have been full. Death, which is an evil to the wicked, is a good to the virtuous: it is a debt which a wise man ought to pay without murmuring. I have been a private person and an emperor, and in neither station have I done any thing, as far as I know, of which I have reason to repent."

Such is the noble testimony that will be borne by the conscience of every one, who from his earliest years has firmly persisted in the resolution to make good use of his life.

No sovereign ever possessed the art of doing the greatest things with ease, and the most difficult with promptitude, in a higher degree than Charlemagne. He governed his household with the same wisdom as his empire. In his prodigious activity he found resources unknown to ordinary minds, and he contrived at once to conquer his enemies, to polish his subjects, to advance and patronize literature and the sciences, to re-estab lish the navy, and to perform in a few years what would seem to require several centuries.

Alfred the Great, one of the best kings that England has to boast of, partly owed his success and his glory to the attention which he paid to the due regulation of the employment of his time,

To this end he divided the twenty-four hours of the day into three equal portions; one of these he appropriated to public business and affairs of state ;* another to reading, study, and religious duties; and the third to bodily exercises, riding, hunting, various sports and recreations, repasts, and sleep. As clocks were not then invented, he contrived to measure time by means of six tapers of a certain length, which burned four hours each, in lanterns placed at the entrance of his palace, and his chaplains gave him notice whenever one of them was consumed. In this manner his superior genius made amends for the deficiencies of the arts. This rigid economy of time, and the art of employing it to good purpose, rendered him one of the most learned men of his age, so that, had he not been illustrious as a king, he would have been famous as an author. An historian, treating of this monarch, breaks

* It is generally allowed that this monarch not only digested several particular laws which are still in force, but that he laid the first foundation of our present happy constitution. There is great reason also to believe that to him we are indebted for trial by jury, and that he was the first who divided the kingdom into shires, at the same time establishing a new form of judicature. For these and other benefits conferred on his country the name of Alfred is still held in high and deserved veneration.