A few nights ago I had dinner with Seneca, to meet some of the leading literary lights. He is somewhat aged. Discussing various differences between our people and his, Seneca said that it is all very well for us to talk of our intellectual superiority, our artistic taste, our wit, our sense of proportion, but we had no idea either of liberty of trade on the one side, or liberty of thought on the other. “That kind of liberty,” said Seneca, “always fares better under a King or a Prince of some kind than under jealous democrats. We should never tolerate the religious tyranny of Athens.” I could not help pointing out that what struck me at Rome to-day was that whereas almost everybody had “literary” pretensions, and discussed nothing but eloquence, form, style, and “artistry,” nearly everybody wrote badly with the exception of Petronius Arbiter, whom the literary world does not recognize. The Romans talk a great deal of “art for art’s sake,” and language, instead of being the simple and perfect vesture of thought, is cultivated for its own sake. “This seems to us Greeks,” I said, “the cardinal principle of decadence, and the contrary of our ideal which is that everything should serve to adorn, but all that is dragged in merely for the sake of ornament is bad.” I think Seneca agreed, but the younger literary men present smiled with pitying condescension on me and said patronizingly: “We’ve got beyond all that.” After that dinner I made up my mind that I had seen enough of the literary set. Seneca was kind enough to get me an audience with the Emperor. I was received yesterday afternoon in the new gold palace which Nero has built for himself. It is a sumptuous building, to our taste vulgar, but not unimposing, and suits its purpose very well, though all his _suite_ complain of the insufficient accommodation and the discomfort of the arrangements. I was taken into a kind of ante-room where a number of Court officials, both civil and military, were waiting, and I was told that the Emperor would probably see me in about a quarter of an hour. They all talked for some time in subdued tones as if they were in a temple; as far as I could see there was no reason for this as the Emperor’s room was at the other end of a long passage, and the doors were shut. At the end of a quarter of an hour a young officer fetched me and ushered me into the Emperor’s presence.