Though thus surrounded with honor and prosperity, Augustus was not free from domestic trouble. The abandoned conduct of his daughter Julia was the cause of sore vexation to him. He had no son, and his nephew Marcellus, and Caius and Lucius, his daughter's sons, whom he had appointed as his successors and heirs, as well as his favorite stepson, Drusus, all died early; while his stepson, Tiberius, was an unamiable character whom he could not love. Age, sorrow, and failing health warned him to seek repose; and, to recruit his strength, he undertook a journey to Campania; but his infirmity increased, and he died at Nola (14 A.D.), in the seventy-seventh year of his age. According to tradition, shortly before his death, he called for a mirror, arranged his hair neatly, and said to his attendants: "Did I play my part well? If so, applaud me!" Augustus had consummate tact and address as a ruler and politician, and made use of the passions and talents of others to forward his own designs. The good and great measures which marked his reign were originated mostly by himself. He encouraged agriculture, patronized the arts and literature, and was himself an author; though only a few fragments of his writings have been preserved. Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, and Livy--greatest of Latin poets and scholars--belonged to the Augustan Age, a name since applied in France to the reign of Louis XIV., in England to that of Queen Anne. ST. AMBROSE[7] By REV. A. A. LAMBING, LL.D. (340-397) [Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.] [Illustration: St. Ambrose. [TN]] Biographical history presents few characters more interesting either to the statesman or the churchman than that of St. Ambrose. As a statesman--though but a small part of his life was devoted to the affairs of civil government--he showed great prudence, was sincerely devoted to the interests of his imperial master, and yet he was at the same time an uncompromising advocate and defender of the rights of the people. As a churchman he united a high degree of personal sanctity and a fatherly care of those intrusted to his pastoral vigilance--especially the poor--to an extraordinary firmness in maintaining the rights of the Church against imperial usurpation, and the purity of doctrine against the inroads of heresy.