He alludes to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but he does not conceal from himself that grief is a disobedient thing. Traitorous tears, he knows, will appear on the face of assumed serenity. "Sometimes," says Seneca, "we entangle the soul in games and gladiator-shows; but even in the midst of such spectacles, the remembrance of its loss steals softly upon it. Therefore is it better to overcome than to deceive. For when the heart has either been cheated by pleasure, or diverted by business, it rebels again, and derives from repose itself the force for new disquiet; but it is lastingly still if it has yielded to reason." A wise man's voice enunciates here simply and beautifully the alone right, but the bitterly difficult rules for the art of life. Seneca, accordingly, counsels his mother not to use the ordinary means for overcoming her grief--a picturesque tour, or employment in household affairs; he advises mental occupation, lamenting, at the same time, that his father--an excellent man, but too much attached to the customs of the ancients--never could prevail upon himself to give her philosophical cultivation. Here we have an amusing glimpse of the old Seneca, I mean of the father. We know now how he looked. When the fashionable literary ladies and gentlemen in Cordova, who had picked up ideas about the rights of woman, and the elevation of her social position, from the _Republic_ of Plato, represented to the old gentleman, that it were well if his young wife attended the lectures of some philosophers, he growled out: "Absurd nonsense; my wife shall not have her head turned with your high-flying notions, nor be one of your silly blue-stockings; cook shall she, bear children, and bring up children!" So said the worthy gentleman, and added, in excellent Spanish, "Basta!" Seneca now speaks at considerable length of the magnanimity of which woman is capable, having no idea then that he was yet, when dying, to experience the truth of what he said, in the case of his own wife, Paulina. A noble man, therefore, a stoic of exalted virtue, has addressed this Letter of Consolation to Helvia. Is it possible that precisely the same man can think and write like a crawling parasite--like the basest flatterer? CHAPTER VI. SENECA BIRBONE. "Magni pectoris est inter secunda moderatio."--SENECA.