Nero! The name is a shudder. In him Nature seems to have done her worst, and conspired with Fate to place her product on an eminence so exalted that all men might see how great a monster she was capable of engendering. Born of a mother, of whom only such a son was worthy, he ran the gamut of every human crime and folly, making the Roman Empire minister to his atrocities, and, cheating venge ance at the end, died lamenting that so splendid a genius should have to pass away.