“What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted! Thrice is he arm’d, that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.” And again, in _Titus Andronicus_ (act iv. sc. 2, l. 18, vol. vi. p. 492), in the words of the original, on the scroll which Demetrius picks up,— “_Dem._ What’s here? A scroll, and written round about! Let’s see: [_Reads._] ‘Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus, Non eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.’ _Chi._ O, ’tis a verse in Horace; I know it well: I read it in the grammar long ago. _Aar._ Ay, just; a verse in Horace; right, you have it. [_Aside._] Now, what a thing it is to be an ass! Here’s no sound jest: the old man hath found their guilt, And sends them weapons wrapp’d about with lines, That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick.” Several of the Emblem writers, however, propound a sentiment not so generally known, in which Apollo’s favourite tree, the Laurel, is the token of a soul unalarmed by threatening evils. Sambucus and Whitney so consider it, and illustrate it with the motto,—_The pure conscience is man’s laurel tree._ Conſcientia integra, laurus. [Illustration: _Sambucus, 1564._] The saying rests on the ancient persuasion that the laurel is the sign of joy, victory and safety, and that it is never struck even by the bolts of Jove. Sambucus, personifying the laurel, celebrates its praise in sixteen elegiac lines beginning,— “PRONA _virens cælum ſpecto, nec fulmina terrent, Ob ſcelus excelſa quæ iacit arce pater,” &c._ “Spread out flourishing heaven I survey, nor do lightnings terrify, Though for crime’s sake the father hurls them from citadels on high, Yea even with my leaves I crackle, and although burnt Daphne I name, whom the master’s love so importuned. So conscious virtue strengthens, and placed far from destruction Pleasing my state is to powers above, and long time is flourishing. Men’s voices he never fears, nor the weapons of fire, Who hath girded his mind round with snow-bright love. This mind the raging Eumenides will not distress, nor the home For the sad and the guiltless overturn’d without cause. Even the hoary swan worn out in inactive old age Gives forth admonitions, as it sings from a stifling throat; Pure of heart with its mate conversing, it washes in water, And morals of clearest hue in due form rehearses. Who repents of unlawful life, and whom conscious errors Do not oppress,—that man sings forth hymns everlasting.” These thoughts in briefer and more nervous style Whitney rehearses to the old theme, _A brazen wall, a sound conscience_ (p. 67),— _Murus æneus, ſana conſcientia._ _To_ MILES HOBART _Eſquier_.