tyle of
royal progresses. In these expeditions he sometimes had no less than
a thousand carts to convey his baggage--the mules that drew them
being all shod with silver, and their drivers dressed in scarlet
clothes of the most costly character. He was attended, also, on
these excursions, by a numerous train of footmen, and of African
servants, who wore rich bracelets upon their arms, and were mounted
on horses splendidly caparisoned.

One of the most remarkable of the events which occurred during
Nero's reign was what was called the burning of Rome,--a great
conflagration, by which a large part of the city was destroyed. It
was very generally believed at the time that this destruction was
the work of Nero himself,--the fruit of his reckless and willful
depravity. There is, it is true, no very positive proof that the
fire was set by Nero's orders, though one of the historians of the
time states that confidential servants belonging to Nero's household
were seen, when the fire commenced, going from house to house with
combustibles and torches, spreading the flames. He was himself at
Antium at the time, and did not come to Rome until the fire had been
raging for many days. If it is true that the fire was Nero's work,
it is not supposed that he designed to cause so extensive a
conflagration. He intended, perhaps, only to destroy a few buildings
that covered ground which he wished to occupy for the enlargement of
his palaces; though it was said by some writers that he really
designed to destroy a great part of the city, with a view to
immortalize his name by rebuilding it in a new and more splendid
form. With these motives, if these indeed were his motives, there
was doubtless mingled a feeling of malicious gratification at any
thing that would terrify and torment the miserable subjects of his
power. When he came to Rome from Antium at the time that the
conflagration was at its height, he found the whole city a scene of
indescribable terror and distress. Thousands of the people had been
burned to death or crushed beneath the ruins of the fallen houses.
The streets were filled with piles of goods and furniture burnt and
broken. Multitudes of men, though nearly exhausted with fatigue,
were desperately toiling on, in hopeless endeavors to extinguish the
flames, or to save some small remnant of their property,--and
distracted mothers, wild and haggard from terror and despair, were
roaming to and fro, seeking their children,--so