What a beautiful thing is Memory! It is like the softened sounds of receding music; it is like the long track of silvery spray which a ship leaves on the divided waters. Twilight is the air’s remembrance of the sun. In the olden time, there were some who thought that in childhood we had recollections of Heaven; and, probably, this little world of ours will be a memory to us when we have left it for ever. It is a happy thing that we can drink again some of the sweetness of a by-gone joy; and very useful, though not so pleasant, that we can recall our past errors and follies, and, by steeping them in regret and shame, turn them into lessons of duty. Pietro Limoncelo was a poor foreigner from the sunny shores of the Mediteranean. While yet a youth, the political troubles of his country had obliged him to leave his home among the fruits and sunbeams, and to find a refuge in London, where he earned a poor living as a journeyman-tailor. He lodged in a garret, in a court branching off from the Strand, near the church of St. Clement Danes. What a change for him! He who had lived near an orange grove, who had basked in the sunshine of the South, or under the shade of purple vines, or beneath the trees where “orange lamps in a green light,” glimmered with a golden beauty—he to become the tenant of a poor room in a dingy thoroughfare, amidst gloom and discomfort, and the hard life of English poverty—it was a sad change, indeed. If such changes happen to any of us, we must keep up our hearts, by remembering that no gloom or darkness can obscure the vision of the Supreme, and that the beams of his blessedness may penetrate even into the dreariest places. Pietro had not been regularly apprenticed to a tailor: it could not be said of him that he had _learned_ the trade; but he had picked up a little knowledge of it from time to time, and practice improved him. What he did was done pretty well, but he was not ranked as a first-class workman; consequently, the only department in which he could get employment was that in which is called the “Slop”—a department in which goods are got up, common in quality and low in price, for the accommodation of humble customers. There was not much opportunity here of earning handsome wages; it was a bare living, and nothing more.