METRE VI.

Heu! quam praecipitem passa ruinam.

'Alas!' she said suffering what headlong ruin does virtue labor, lying conquered under vice! All the beauty of virtue is banished; the bridles of madness are loosed for evil ; the day of justice fades; hardly the shadow of its shadow is left surviving; lacking light, abounding in night, it bewails the extinguished star of its glory. While the lurid lightning of crime blasts the world, the darkness of guile clouds the planet [1] of faith, and no stars of the virtues redeem the abyss of that darkness. The evening of faith lies upon the world, and the night of the chaos of falsehood is everywhere. Faith sickens with fraud; fraud, too, deceives itself by fraud, and thus guile is upon the heels of guile. In the sphere of conduct, morals lack morality; laws lack law; justice loses the righteousness of its course. For all justice is executed without justice, and law flourishes without law. The world grows worse, and now its golden age departs. The poverty of iron clothes it; of old the glory of gold invested it. Now guile does not seek the robe of hypocrisy, nor does the foul odor of vice look for the balsams of the virtues to furnish a mantle for its stench. The nettle, indeed, does [2] cloak its pov-

1. Reading astrum, with B.

2. Reading Sic urtica, with Migne.

erty with roses, sea-weed with hyacinths, dross with silver, rouge-paint with a true glow, that thus, for a time,as appearance may make amends for evil. But crime puts off all ornaments, nor colors itself with the light of justice. For vice strips itself openly; falsehood becomes the tongue of its own madness. What safety remains when guile arms the very mothers against their own bowels, when brotherly love labors in untruth, when the right hand lies to its sister? The law of goodness-to esteem good men-is considered false, and the law of piety is impiety, and to be pure is to all a cause of disgrace. Without shame inhuman man repudiates the proper practices of humanity. Then, degenerate, he takes up the base actions of a brute. and thus, worthy to be unmanned, forsakes his manhood.'