his healthy sports, his serious studies, his moral instruction, his
public dignities and duties, all contributed to form his character in a
beautiful and manly mould. There are, however, three respects in which
his education seems especially worthy of notice;--I mean the
_diligence_, the _gratitude_, and the _hardiness_ in which he was
encouraged by others, and which he practised with all the ardour of
generous conviction.

1. In the best sense of the word, Aurelius was _diligent_. He alludes
more than once in his _Meditations_ to the inestimable value of time,
and to his ardent desire to gain more leisure for intellectual pursuits.
He flung himself with his usual undeviating stedfastness of purpose into
every branch of study, and though he deliberately abandoned rhetoric, he
toiled hard at philosophy, at the discipline of arms, at the
administration of business, and at the difficult study of Roman
jurisprudence. One of the acquisitions for which he expresses gratitude
to his tutor Rusticus, is that of reading carefully, and not being
satisfied with the superficial understanding of a book. In fact, so
strenuous was his labour, and so great his abstemiousness, that his
health suffered by the combination of the two.

2. His opening remarks show that he remembered all his teachers--even
the most insignificant--with sincere _gratitude_. He regarded each one
of them as a man from whom something could be learnt, and from whom he
actually _did_ learn that something. Hence the honourable respect--a
respect as honourable to himself as to them--which he paid to Fronto, to
Rusticus, to Julius Proculus, and others whom his noble and
conscientious gratitude raised to the highest dignities of the State. He
even thanks the gods that "he made haste to place those who brought him
up in the station of honour which they seemed to desire, without putting