We have an apt specimen of this in the first period of the reign of Nero. The historians, Tacitus in particular, have treated this with too much incredulity. It was the passion of that eminent man to indulge in subtleties, and to find hidden meanings in cases where in reality every thing is plain. We must not regard the panegyric of Seneca, and the devotion of Lucan to the imperial stripling, as unworthy of our attention. He was declared emperor before he had completed the eighteenth year of his age. No occasion for the exhibition of liberality, clemency, courtesy or kindness escaped him. He called every one by his name, and saluted all orders of men. When the senate shewed a disposition to confer on him peculiar honours, he interposed, he said, "Let them be bestowed when I have deserved them(83)." Seneca affirms, that in the first part of his reign, and to the time in which the philosopher dedicated to him his treatise of Clemency, he had "shed no drop of blood(84)." He adds, "If the Gods were this day to call thee to a hearing, thou couldst account to them for every man that had been intrusted to thy rule. Not an individual has been lost from the number, either by secret practices, or by open violence. This could scarcely have been, if thy good dispositions had not been natural, but assumed. No one can long personate a character. A pretended goodness will speedily give place to the real temper; while a sincere mind, and acts prompted by the heart, will not fail to go on from one stage of excellence to another(85)." (83) Suetonius, Nero, cap. 10. (84) De Clementia, Lib. I, cap. II. (85) De Clementia, cap. I. The philosopher expresses himself in raptures on that celebrated phrase of Nero, WOULD I HAD NEVER LEARNED TO WRITE! "An exclamation," he says, "not studied, not uttered for the purpose of courting popularity, but bursting insuppressibly from thy lips, and indicating the vehemence of the struggle between the kindness of thy disposition and the duties of thy office(86)." (86) Ibid., Lib. II, cap. I. How many generous purposes, what bright and heart-thrilling visions of beneficence and honour, does the young man, just starting in the race of life, conceive! There is no one in that period of existence, who has received a reasonable education, and has not in his very nonage been trod down in the mire of poverty and oppression, that does not say to himself, "Now is the time; and I will do something worthy to be remembered by myself and by others." Youth is the season of generosity. He calls over the catalogue of his endowments, his attainments, and his powers, and exclaims, "To that which I am, my contemporaries are welcome; it shall all be expended for their service and advantage."