upon his uncle's studies. Then, too, Pliny was
under his uncle's charge only for a few years, for Pliny the Elder
lost his life in the famous eruption of Vesuvius. He was lord high
admiral of the Mediterranean west of Italy; and of course when the
eruption was reported at Misenum, at the admiralty-house, he must
needs view it. It was too remarkable a thing not to have a high place
in his _Natural History_. He ordered out his light galley. The rest we
all know--how the admiral was as brave as he was fat, and seeing the
danger in which so many friends with whom he had often supped were
put, attempted to help some of them. So, because of the widow Rectina
and his good friend Pomponianus, he came to his sad death.

It was not so very great a loss to his nephew, now turned of
eighteen--a likely youth, of course well connected, and now his
uncle's heir. Caius Pliny went through the steps of the civil service
with credit to himself, though his advancement was checked during
Domitian's reign. He was indeed a consul, but then many consuls were
appointed during the year. But it was much more prudent for him to
keep quiet. He had a good practice--for this, though not strictly
accurate, is the nearest term by which to designate his legal
employment--and, to take a leap beyond the time we are speaking of, he
was about twenty-five years afterward governor of Bithynia, whence he
wrote his famous letter to the emperor Trajan about the Christians
in his province. Of this letter much has been said, but we think
that Pliny has not always been rightly judged about it. He was too
conservative a man to be a persecutor, but was not much above or
beyond his own time. And he wrote of the Christians as being a
_religio illicita_--an illegal assembly of heretics--as regarded
the state religion, which it was his duty to defend. It was wrong
to persecute the Christians--wrong on general principles, wrong on
particular axioms. But, alas! it has taken nearly seventeen more
centuries of fiercer persecutors than Pliny proved to be to learn this
little fact. All this is, as he would have said, _obiter_--by the way.
It has, however, a good deal to do indirectly with his good living;
for, as we were saying, C.P.C. Secundus lived very well indeed--not
extravagantly, but comfortably.

Now, to live well or comfortably, it is needful to have something
wherewith to live thus comfortably. The start which C.P. Secundus
gave C.P.C. Secundus lifted him up into a