me ready access; and, after cold and hunger had given way to fire and food, I experienced no difficulty in drawing from him an ingenuous and vivid narration of his personal story--one so singular and romantic in its character, and so illustrative of the purest impulses of the human heart, as to merit a repetition better than many a more highly wrought and complex tale. Cleared of the circumlocution caused by his indifferent stock of English, and converted into a dialect more uniform and familiar to our ears, it ran substantially thus:-- “I come from the neighbourhood of the little village of Montanio, at the foot of the great Appennines. My father was, and I pray is still, a small vine-grower and gardener, supplying the market of Telese, and other towns within reach, with fruits, flowers, and vegetables. We were a family of five--my father, my dear mother, my elder and only brother Ludovico, my beautiful and gentle sister Bianca, and myself;” and his tone grew touchingly tremulous, as, in connection with his cottage home, he went over the old, familiar, household names. “Oh, that I was ever called upon to leave them to wander, unfriended and unknown, among rough and careless strangers, to forsake all pleasant things, the gay and glad green fields, the sunny hills, the sparkling mountain streams, the flowered and fruited gardens, and the ever bright and beautiful sky which stretched its unclouded azure overhead, for this cold and shivering, this dim and misty land! But yet I would do as much again, if such a call again were made upon me--dark shame upon me if I hesitated!--and when I return to them once more--and oh, may heaven grant that now I shortly may!--I will look with the greater rapture upon all I left, upon beauties and on blessings I then too little, far too little, cared for. My father was ever kind to us when we were in the way of obedience to his wishes and ideas of duty, but rigid and severe to resent every error we might commit. I have heard the elder neighbours say that in his own young days he had been wild and perverse, and entangled thereby in many troubles, and that, therefore, in affection and providence for us, he was the more exact in our care and education. I was too young to be much in the way of following my own bent, and so had little opportunity of offending him; but my brother Ludovico, who was hot, daring, and adventurous, was often led to look for wild and irregular excitement with the roving hunters and rude shepherds from the mountains above, and his mingling in their lawless society always raised my father’s resentment, and, despite my mother’s exerted influence, often brought disquiet and disunion among us. But though reckless and unsettled, Ludovico was ever frank, winsome, and honest-hearted, which, however, could not save him from sharing in the evil fame of his companions; and though his handsome figure, open temper, and ready offices for all who sought them, made him a favourite