9. A'drian was one of the most remarkable of the Roman emperors for the variety of his endowments. He was highly skilled in all the accomplishments both of body and mind. He composed with great beauty, both in prose and verse, he pleaded at the bar, and was one of the best orators of his time. 10. Nor were his virtues fewer than his accomplishments. His moderation and clemency appeared by pardoning the injuries which he had received when he was yet but a private man. One day meeting a person who had formerly been his most inveterate enemy--"My good friend," said he, "you have escaped; for I am made emperor." He was affable to his friends, and gentle to persons of meaner stations; he relieved their wants, and visited them in sickness; it being his constant maxim, that he had been elected emperor, not for his own good, but for the benefit of mankind at large. 11. These virtues were, however, contrasted by vices of considerable magnitude; or rather, he wanted strength of mind to preserve his rectitude of character without deviation. 12. He was scarcely settled on the throne, when several of the northern barbarians began to devastate the frontier provinces of the empire. These hardy nations, who now found the way to conquer by issuing from their forests, and then retiring on the approach of a superior force, began to be truly formidable to Rome. 13. A'drian had thoughts of contracting the limits of the empire, by giving up some of the most remote and least defensible provinces; in this, however, he was overruled by friends, who wrongly imagined that an extensive frontier would intimidate an invading enemy. 14. But though he complied with their remonstrances, he broke down the bridge over the Dan'ube, which his predecessor had built, sensible that the same passage which was open to him, was equally convenient to the incursions of his barbarous neighbours.