CHAPTER VIII.
SENECA'S PHILOSOPHY GIVES WAY.
There are some misfortunes of which the very essence consists in their continuance.

They are tolerable so long as they are illuminated by a ray of hope.

Seclusion and hardship might even come at first with some charm of novelty to a philosopher who, as was not unfrequent among the amateur thinkers of his time, occasionally practised them in the very midst of wealth and friends.

But as the hopeless years rolled on, as the efforts of friends proved unavailing, as the loving son, and husband, and father felt himself cut off from the society of those whom he cherished in such tender affection, as the dreary island seemed to him ever more barbarous and more barren, while season after season added to its horrors without revealing a single compensation, Seneca grew more and more disconsolate and depressed.

It seemed to be his miserable destiny to rust away, useless, unbefriended, and forgotten.