This, however, was not to be; a sudden change took place in the disposition of the prince, when his mother was charged with conspiring against him. It was her life or his; and Nero won. The taste of blood transformed him into a monster, and he forthwith entered upon a reign of horrors that has no equal in history. Virtue was now the surest road to ruin. Falsely accused of complicity in a conspiracy, Seneca was sentenced to put an end to his own life (65 A.D.). With perfect calmness he received the royal mandate, and caused his veins to be severed; but the blood flowing too slowly, he entered a vapor-bath and ended his sufferings by suffocation. His wife Paulina elected to die with him, and in the same manner; but Nero had her veins ligatured, and thus added several years of misery to her life. To his friends, Seneca was permitted to leave no more valuable legacy than his virtuous example. Seneca was a great moral leader, the first of a class of philosophers who aimed at winning the people back to the virtue of primitive Rome. His teachings were in strange contrast to the age in which he lived; they bear a striking resemblance to those of the Gospel, with which he may have become acquainted through St. Paul. The fathers of the Church were loud in their praises of “the divine pagan,” but there is no evidence that, as some have stated, Seneca was persuaded by the apostle to become a Christian. Our philosopher is described as simple in his tastes. Though the envied possessor of a princely fortune, he could consistently write in support of temperance on his table of gold. A cupful of water from the brook was sweeter to him than beakers of Italy’s choicest wines, and the fruits of the wild wood he preferred to the luxurious dishes fashion required him to spread before the rich and great. His fault was weakness, which betrayed him into flattery, and perhaps made him an unwilling accessory to some of his master’s crimes. Seneca was the author, not only of philosophical treatises, but also of ten tragedies, and one hundred and twenty-four moral epistles. He even attempted a satire on the stupidity of the emperor Claudius, representing him as transformed after death, not into a god, as the senate decreed, but into a pumpkin. Several other works from his pen are lost. The best of Seneca’s treatises are those on Anger, Providence, and Consolation. His style, labored, antithetical, and full of repetitions, has an artificial glitter about it that impresses the reader unfavorably. EXTRACTS FROM SENECA’S WRITINGS. ON ANGER.