Of what thought the man?
Not of the present loveliness which the scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the stars should whisper to the soul.

Gloomily over a stormy and a hideous past roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul with crime,--plan upon plan, schemed with ruthless wisdom, followed up by remorseless daring, and yet all now a ruin and a blank; an intellect at war with good, and the good had conquered! But the conviction neither touched the conscience nor enlightened the reason; he felt, it is true, a moody sense of impotence, but it brought rage, not despondency.

It was not that he submitted to Good as too powerful to oppose, but that he deemed he had not yet gained all the mastery over the arsenal of Evil.

And evil he called it not.

Good and evil to him were but subordinate genii at the command of Mind; they were the slaves of the lamp.