What flattered Alexander of Macedon into a madman, and perverted the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many there be who pass through it "pure and undefiled." Such were the great Alfred of England, Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, and his greater successor in true glory, Gustavus Adolphus,--all champions of immutable justice and ministers of peace. And though these may be regarded as personages beyond the sphere of ordinary emulations, yet the same principles, or their opposites, prevail in every order of men from the prince to the peasant; and, perhaps, at no period of the world more than the present were these divers principles in greater necessity to be considered, and, according to the just conclusion, be obeyed. On all sides of us we see public and private society broken up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised, that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which bear "good fruits," wholesome to the taste as well as pleasant to the sight, whether they grow on high altitudes or in the humbler valleys of the earth; let us view men of all degrees in life in their actions, and not in their pretensions,--such men as were some of the Sobieski race in Poland, in every change of their remarkable lives. When placed at the summit of mortal fame, surrounded by greatness and glory, and consequent power, they evinced neither pride to others nor a sense of self-aggrandizement in themselves; and, when under a reverse dispensation, national misfortunes pursued them, and family sorrows pierced their souls, the weakness of a murmur never sunk the dignity of their sustaining fortitude, nor did the firmness of that virtue harden the amiable sensibilities of their hearts. To exhibit so truly heroic and endearing a portrait of what every Christian man ought to be,--for the law of God is the same to the poor as to the rich,--I have chosen one of that illustrious and, I believe, now extinct race for the subject of my sketch; and the more aptly did it present itself, it being necessary to show my hero amidst scenes and circumstances ready to exercise his brave and generous propensities, and to put their personal issues to the test on his mind. Hence Poland's sadly-varying destinies seemed to me the stage best calculated for the development of any self-imposed task.