And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.”
The power of Conscience, as the soul’s bulwark against adversities, has been sung from the time when Horace wrote (Epist. i. 1. 60),—
“Hic murus aëneus esto,
Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa,”—
“This be thy wall of brass, to be conscious to thyself of no shame, to become pale at no crime.”
Or, in the still more popular ode (Carm. i. 22), which being of old recited in the palaces of Mæcenas and Augustus at Rome, has, after the flow of nearly nineteen centuries, been revived in the drawing rooms of Paris and London, and of the whole civilized world;—
“Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus,