It is useless to inquire further into the nature of his religious beliefs. He would have been at a loss to define them himself. The great salient feature is here as elsewhere the tragedy of a great moral nature in the throes of superstition, of a beautiful life deprived of its fit setting: a tragedy too common in our own days filling wide spaces with spiritual waste and hopeless sighs, and making hearts desolate for that their light is gone out or flickers low. On his return to Rome, Marcus celebrated a splendid triumph, shared in by Commodus, over the conquered German peoples. It was against his own better feelings and in concession to Roman vulgarity that he endured this ordeal. He often expresses his disgust for these functions and, as we have seen, regarded conquerors as no better than robbers. The shouts of the mob, the long train of captives, the reeking public banquets were little to his taste; and for him there was no need of the attendant who usually stood behind the conqueror on the triumphal car to remind him that he was a man lest he should perhaps bring down on himself the wrath of the gods by an unseemly arrogance. There was less need than ever on this day; for with Commodus by his side a great sorrow overshadowed him. He had nominated Commodus as his successor to avoid a worse evil--the evil of civil war, which would certainly have arisen had he chosen one more worthy from his own philosophic circle. Yet Commodus, though still a youth, had already given full reign to his passions; and Marcus can scarcely have failed to foresee the disaster which he was to bring upon the Empire. The shadow of this sorrow and of the great loneliness which was his during his later years, grows darker and darker over the last books of the Meditations. As Renan has remarked, they have but one thought, that of passing as gently as may be from the world. In the earlier books he gathers strength for the struggle of life; now all is preparation for death. The evil plight of public affairs also justified this world-weariness. The signs of decay were already visible in Rome: the handwriting had been seen on the walls of the Capitol. Even Renan has to admit that “in reality the progress effected during the reigns of Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius had been merely superficial. It had been limited to a varnish of hypocrisy and external professions, which people assumed in order to be in harmony with the two wise Emperors. The masses were grossly materialistic; the army was decaying; the laws alone had been changed for the better.” Plague, famine, and war had done their work of death. Marcus did all he could to alleviate the misery; but bad finance had left him helpless to cope with such universal disaster. And to fill his cup of bitterness news was brought that his old enemies on the Danube were in arms again. He must needs, ill and heartsick though he was, gird himself once more and prepare to leave Rome for the wild North--this time never to return.