It was a dark and stormy night in December. Everybody in the house had
long been in bed and asleep; but, deeply interested in the “Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius,” I had prolonged my reading until the small hours
had begun to increase, and I heard the bells of the Capucin convent
strike for two o’clock. I then laid down my book, and began to reflect
upon it. The fire had nearly burned out, and, unwilling yet to go, I
threw on to it a bundle of canne and a couple of sticks; again the
fresh flame darted out, and gave a glow to the room. Outside, the
storm was fierce and passionate. Gusts beat against the panes, shaking
the old windows of the palace, and lashing them with wild rain. At
intervals a sudden blue light flashed through the room, followed by a
trampling roar of thunder overhead. The fierce libeccio howled like
a wild beast around the house, as if in search of its prey, and then
died away, disappointed and growling, and after a short interval again
leaped with fresh fury against the windows and walls, as if maddened
by their resistance. As I sat quietly gazing into the fire and musing
on many shadows of thought that came and passed, my imagination went
back into the far past, when Marcus Aurelius led his legions against
the Quadi, the Marcomanni, and the Sarmati, and brought before me the
weather-beaten tent in which he sat so many a bleak and bitter night,
after the duty of the day was done, and all his men had retired to
rest, writing in his private diary those noble meditations, which,
though meant solely for his private eye, are one of the most precious
heritages we have of ancient life and thought. I seemed to see him
there in those bleak wilds of Pannonia, seated by night in his tent.
At his side burns a flickering torch. Sentinels silently pace to and
fro. The cold wind flirts and flaps the folds of the prætorium, and
shakes the golden eagle above it. Far off is heard the howl of the
wolf prowling through the shadowy forests that encompass the camp;
or the silence is broken by the sharp shrill cry of some night bird
flying overhead through the dark. Now and then comes the clink of armor
from the tents of the cavalry, or the call of the watchword along the
line, or the neighing of horses as the circuitores make their rounds.
He is ill and worn with toil and care. He is alone; and there, under
the shadow of night, beside his camp-table, he sits and meditates,
and writes upon his waxen tablets those lofty sentences of admonition
to duty and encouragement to virtue, those counselings of himself to
heroic action, patient endurance of evil, and tranquillity of life,
that breathe the highest spirit of morality and philosophy. Little did
he think, in his lonely watches, that the words he was writing only for
himself would still be cherished after long centuries had passed away,
and would be pondered over by the descendants of nations which were
then uncultured barbarians, as low in civilization as the Pannonians
against whom he was encamped. Yet of all the books that ancient
literature has left us, none is to be found containing the record of
higher and purer thought, or more earnest and unselfish character. As I
glanced up at the cast of the Capitoline bust of him which stood in the
corner of my room, and saw the sweet melancholy of that gentle face,
ere care and disappointment had come over it and ruled it with lines
of age and anxiety, a strange longing came over me to see him and hear
his voice, and a sad sense of that great void of time and space which
separated us. Where is he now? What is he now? I asked myself. In what
other distant world of thought and being is his spirit moving? Has it
any remembrance of the past? Has it any knowledge of the present? Yet
the hand that wrote is now but dust, which may be floating about the
mausoleum where he was buried, near the Vatican, or perhaps lying in
that library of the popes upon some stained manuscript of this very
work it wrote, to be blown carelessly away by some studious abbé as he
ranges the volume on its shelf among the other precious records of the
past.
The hand is but dust, yet the thoughts that it recorded are fresh and
living as ever. Since he passed from this world, how little progress
have we made in philosophy and morality! Here in this little book are
rules for the conduct of life which might shame almost any Christian.
Here are meditations which go to the root of things, and explore the
dim secret world which surrounds us, and return again, as all our
explorations do, unsatisfied. All these centuries have passed, and we
still ask the same questions and find no answer. Where he is now he
knows the secret, or he is beyond the desire to know it. The mystery
is solved for him which we are guessing, and his is either a larger,
sweeter life, growing on and on—or everlasting rest. A stoic, he found
comfort in his philosophy, as great perhaps as we Christians find in
our faith. He believed in his gods as we believe in ours. How could
they satisfy a mind like his? How could these impure and passionate
existences, given to human follies and weaknesses, to low intrigues,
to vulgar jealousies, to degraded loves, satisfy a nature so high, so
self-denying, so earnest, so pure? Yet they were his gods; to them he
sacrificed, in them he trusted, looking forward to a calm future with a
serenity at least equal to ours, undisturbed by misgivings; believing
in justice, and in unjust gods; believing in purity, and in impure gods.
“No!” said a mild voice, “I did not believe in impure and unjust gods.”
And looking up, I saw before me the calm face of the emperor and
philosopher of whom I was thinking. There he stood before me as I knew
him from his busts and statues, with his full brow and eyes, his sweet
mouth, his curling hair, now a little grizzled with age, and a deep
meditative look of tender earnestness upon his face.
I know not why I was not startled to see him there, but I was not. It
seemed to me natural, as events seem in a dream. The realities, as we
call those facts which are merely visionary and transitory, vanished;
and the unrealities, as we call those of thought and being, usurped
their place. Nothing seemed more fitting than that he should be there.
To the mind all things are possible and simple, and there is no time or
space in thought which annihilates them.