, shall be scathless: his house shall rejoice
In an offspring of beauty for ever.

The heart of the haughty delights to beget
A haughty heart. From time to time
In children's children recurrent appears
The ancestral crime.
When the dark hour comes that the gods have decreed
And the Fury burns with wrathful fires,
A demon unholy, with ire unabated,
Lies like black night on the halls of the fated;
And the recreant Son plunges guiltily on
To perfect the guilt of his Sires.

But Justice shines in a lowly cell;
In the homes of poverty, smoke-begrimed,
With the sober-minded she loves to dwell.
But she turns aside
From the rich man's house with averted eye,
The golden-fretted halls of pride
Where hands with lucre are foul, and the praise
Of counterfeit goodness smoothly sways;
And wisely she guides in the strong man's despite
All things to an issue of RIGHT.

Let me now give you another passage from the _Eumenides_--or _Furies_, of
AEschylus.

Orestes, prince of Argos, you must remember, has avenged on his mother
Clytemnestra the murder of his father, king Agamemnon, on his return from
Troy. Pursued by the Furies, he takes refuge in the temple of Apollo at
Delphi, and then, still Fury-haunted, goes to Athens, where Pallas Athene
the warrior-maiden, the tutelary goddess of Athens, bids him refer his
cause to the Areopagus, the highest court of Athens, Apollo acting as his
advocate, and she sitting as umpire in the midst. The white and black
balls are thrown into the urn, and are equal; and Orestes is only
delivered by the decision of Athene--as the representative of the nearer
race of gods, the Olympians, the friends of man, in whose likeness man is
made. The Furies are the representatives of the older and darker
creed--which yet has a depth of truth in it--of the irreversible dooms
which underlie all nature; and which represent the _Law_, and not the
Gospel, the consequence of the mere act, independent of the spirit which
has prompted it.

They break out in fury against the overbearing arrogance of these younger
gods. Athene bears their rage with equanimity, addresses them in the
language of kindness, even of veneration, till these so indomitable
beings are unable to withstand the charm of her mild eloquence. They are
to have a sanctuary in the Athenian land, and to be called no more Furie