memory or rough notes, specifying the manner in which each professor treated his theme; he then adds his own judgment on their merits, often interspersing the more tedious discussions with _bon-mots_ or literary anecdotes. The most readable portions are the prefaces, where he writes in his own person in the unaffected epistolary style. We learn from them many particulars about the lives of the great _rhetores_ and the state of taste and literary education. But in the preface to the tenth book (the last of the series) he expresses an utter weariness of a subject which not even the reminiscences of happier days could invest with serious interest. There are no indications that Seneca rose to the first eminence. His extraordinary memory, diligence, and virtuous habits gained him respect from his pupils and the intimacy of the great. But there is nothing in his writings to show a man of more than average capacity, who, having been thrown all his life in an artificial and narrowing profession, has lost the power of taking a vigorous interest in things, and acquired the habit of looking at questions from what we might call _the examiner's point of view_. We have remains of two sets of compositions by him; _Controversiae_, or legal questions discussed by way of practice for actual cases, divided into ten books, of which about half are preserved; and _Suasoriae_, or imaginary themes, such as those ridiculed by Juvenal: "Consilium dedimus Sullae, privatus ut altum Dormiret." These last are printed first in our editions, because, being abstract in character and not calling for any special knowledge, they were better suited for beginners. The style of the book varies. In the prefaces it is not inelegant, and shows few traces of the decline, but in the excerpts from Latro and Fuscus, (which are perhaps nearly in their own words) we observe the silver Latinity already predominant. Much is written in a very compressed manner, reading like notes of a lecture or a table of contents. There is, however, a geniality about the old man which renders him, even when uninteresting, not altogether unpleasing.