will inform you." He opened it, and read as follows:

"That son of a vile mechanic, who told you that one day you might repent the scorn with which you treated him, has the satisfaction of seeing his prediction accomplished. For know, proud noble! that the deliverer of your only son from slavery is

The banished Uberto."

Adorno dropped the letter and covered his face with his hand, while his son was displaying in the warmest language of gratitude the virtues of Uberto, and the truly paternal kindness he had experienced from him. As the debt could not be cancelled, Adorno resolved if possible to repay it. He made such powerful intercessions with the other nobles, that the sentence pronounced on Uberto was reversed, and full permission given him to return to Genoa. In ap

prising him of this event, Adorno expressed his sense of the obligations he lay under to him, acknowledged the genuine nobleness of his character, and requested his friendship. Uberto returned to his country, and closed his days in peace, with the universal esteem of his fellow citizens.

TRUE HEROISM.

You have read, my Edmund, the stories of Achilles, and Alexander, and Charles of Sweden, and have, I doubt not, admired the high courage which seemed to set them above all sensations of fear, and rendered them capable of the most extraordinary actions. The world calls these men heroes; but before we give them that noble appellation, let us consider what were the motives which animated them to act and suffer as they did.

The first was a ferocious savage, governed by the passions of anger and revenge, in gratifying which he disregarded all impulses of duty and humanity. The second was intoxicated with the love of glory-swoln with absurd pride-and enslaved by dissolute pleasures; and in pursuit of these objects he reckoned the blood of millions as of no account. The third was unfeeling, obstinate, and tyrannical, and preferred ruining his country, and sacrificing all his faithful followers, to the humiliation of giving up any of his mad projects. Self, you see, was the spring of all their conduct; and a selfish man can never be a hero. I will give you two examples of genuine heroism, one shown in acting, the other in suffering; and these shall be true stories, which is perhaps more than can be said of half that is recorded of Achilles and Alexander.

You have probably heard something

of Mr. Howard, the reformer of prisons, to whom a monument is erected in St. Paul's church. His whole life almost was heroism; for he confronted all sorts of dangers with the sole view of reliev ing the miseries of his fellow-creatures. When he began to examine the state of prisons, scarcely any in the country was free from a very fatal and infectious distemper, called the gaol-fever. Wherever he heard of it, he made a point of seeing the poor sufferers, and often went down into their dungeons, when the keepers themselves would not accompany him. He travelled several times over almost the whole of Europe, and even into Asia, in order to gain knowledge of the state of prisons and hospitals, and point out means for lessening the calamities that prevail in them. He even went into countries where the plague was, that he might learn the best methods of treating that terrible contagious disease;

and he voluntarily exposed himself to perform a strict quarantine, as one suspected of having the infection of the plague, only that he might be thoroughly acquainted with the methods used for prevention. He at length died of a fever caught in attending on the sick on the borders of Crim Tartary, honoured and admired by all Europe, after having greatly contributed to enlighten his own and many other countries with respect to some of the most important objects of humanity. Such was Howard the Good; as great a hero in preserving mankind, as some of the false heroes above mentioned were in destroying them.

My second hero is a much humbler, but not less genuine one.

There was a journeyman bricklayer in this town-an able workman, but a very drunken idle fellow, who spent at the alehouse almost all he earned, and