There was in those days no more terrible punishment than that of exile, because expulsion from Rome was banishment from the world. Eight long years Seneca lived on the wild island. I cannot forgive my old friend, therefore, for recording nothing about its nature, about the history and condition of its inhabitants, at that period. A single chapter from the pen of Seneca on these subjects, would now be of great value to us. But to have said nothing about the barbarous country of his exile, was very consistent with his character as Roman. Haughty, limited, void of sympathetic feeling for his kind, was the man of those times. How different is the relation in which we now stand to nature and history! For the banished Seneca the island was merely a prison that he detested. The little that he says about it in his book _De Consolatione ad Matrem Helviam_, shows how little he knew of it. For though it was no doubt still more rude and uncultivated than at present, its natural grandeur was the same. He composed the following epigrams on Corsica, which are to be found in his poetical works:-- "Corsican isle, where his town the Phocæan colonist planted, Corsica, called by the Greeks Cyrnus in earlier days, Corsica, less than thy sister Sardinia, longer than Elba, Corsica, traversed by streams--streams that the fisherman loves, Corsica, dreadful land! when thy summer's suns are returning, Scorch'd more cruelly still, when the fierce Sirius shines; Spare the sad exile--spare, I mean, the hopelessly buried-- Over his living remains, Corsica, light lie thy dust." The second has been said to be spurious, but I do not see why our heart-broken exile should not have been its author, as well as any of his contemporaries or successors in Corsican banishment. "Rugged the steeps that enclose the barbarous Corsican island, Savage on every side stretches the solitude vast; Autumn ripens no fruits, nor summer prepares here a harvest. Winter, hoary and chill, wants the Palladian gift;[I] Never rejoices the spring in the coolness of shadowy verdure, Here not a blade of grass pierces the desolate plain, Water is none, nor bread, nor a funeral-pile for the stranger-- Two are there here, and no more--the Exile alone with his Wo."[J]