The neatest and prettiest [palindrome] that has yet appeared comes from a highly cultivated lady who was attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Having been banished from the court on suspicion of too great familiarity with a nobleman in high favor, the lady adopted this device — a moon covered by a cloud — and the following palindrome for a motto —

ABLATA AT ALBA. (Secluded but Pure.)

The merit of this kind of composition was never in any example so heightened by appropriateness and delicacy of sentiment.

— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882