But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a nobler man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the conclusion of the second satire (61): O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes, quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa? haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo et Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus, haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit. peccat et haec, peccat, vitio tamen utitur. at vos dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum? nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae. quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance non possit magni Messalae lippa propago? compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto: haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo. O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age into the temple-service and infer what the gods like from this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it--to steep Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins--yes, it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you, reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young girl offers to Venus. Give _we_ rather to the gods such an offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no means of giving, even out of his great dish--duty to God and man well blended in the mind--purity in the shrine of the heart, and a manly flavour of nobleness pervading the bosom. Let me have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall win me acceptance. CONINGTON.