It would be unjust to the memory of a great man if we were to think of Trajan as a soldier only. He was a strenuous man, unsparing of himself in any part of his duty. He pursued a policy of public benefit in Italy, striving, like Augustus, to encourage agriculture and population, and carrying out a plan of his predecessor Nerva for providing a fund for the education of poor children. This last institution became an important one, and shows well how really benevolent—perhaps even to excess—how anxious for the well-being of Italy, were the Cæsars of the second century. Money was lent by the State to the Italian farmers in need of it, and the interest, at five per cent., was appropriated to the education of boys up to eighteen and girls up to fourteen years of age. Trajan bestowed the same minute care on the provinces. In most of these there was no trouble, but in one case, Bithynia, which had been under Senatorial governors, he had to send out a special commissioner to repair neglect and mischief. Luckily for us it happened that this commissioner was Pliny the younger, nephew of the great encyclopædist of the same name; and Pliny was so prominent a figure of the time that his correspondence has been preserved. That part of it which contains his letters to Trajan, and Trajan’s brief and pithy answers, is one of the most precious treasures that have survived from ancient literature. Pliny consults him on a variety of details, some of them almost ludicrously petty, some of them of general importance, such as a famous one about his policy towards the Christians; and the answers show us Trajan as a shrewd and sensible man, fully aware that in such a unity as the Roman Empire there must needs be diversity, and that governors must learn to adapt themselves to such diversity without losing hold of the principles of justice and equity. Before we leave this subject it may be as well to mention that this constant interchange of letters between persons more than a thousand miles apart need astonish no one. In the interest of imperialism the public posts had been thoroughly organised by Augustus; the roads were excellent, the shipping well seen to, and travelling was at least as easy and rapid as it was in England less than a century ago. Trajan’s strong and rather rugged features, familiar to all students of the Empire, are in striking contrast to those of his three successors. He was clean shaven, but his next successor, Hadrian, introduced the practice of wearing his beard, and this was adhered to. All the imperial portraits of this age, as preserved on coins and sculptures, are perfectly authentic, and the likenesses are consistent. In the British Museum the reader may see the features of these great Cæsars as faithfully reproduced as those of British statesmen in the National Portrait Gallery.