ing his purse on the table, "let us have something with all haste."

The domestic immediately left the room, and another shortly afterwards entered, and began to arrange the table for the evening meal. Manfredi, saying that he would return in a few minutes, left his guests, and Alfred found himself alone with the palmer.

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My son," said the latter, "chance has once more thrown us together. I thought, when last we parted, I saw you for the last time. You know that I have abandoned the world; its affairs have no longer any interest for me. You will, therefore, be astonished to see me here." There was a short pause.

"Julio Manfredi," he continued, "is about to engage in a desperate conspiracy against the Lords of Milan, reckless alike of the consequences to others and himself. It is in vain that he invokes on his side the spirit of philanthropy and justice; it is ambition that hurries him on to certain destruction. I have come hither with the feeble hope of turning him from his purpose, as much for his own sake, as for that

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of one who loves him more than life. I have but little hopes of success, for I know his proud unbending spirit; but I trust that you, my son, will not be involved in the ruin which threatens him. If you have any thought of engaging in his perilous undertaking, reflect, I entreat you, while you have have yet time. You see before you the victim of the ungovernable passions of his youth. Do not, I beseech you, allow yourself to become their slave, unless you would have your heart withered, and your brain seared like mine."

Alfred, astonished at the palmer's warmth of manner, was about to reply, when Manfredi again entered the room. Supper was shortly afterwards served, of which the two travellers partook heartily. The palmer ate sparingly, and remained silent during the meal.

After the table was cleared, and the domestics had left the room, the recluse was the first to break silence.

Julio," said he, "you are doubless surprised at my unexpected appearance here tonight."

"I confess I am, father; and on that account

you are doubly welcome. I am only grieved to think you have had so inhospitable a reception."

"You know, Julio, that my wants are few and simple; but I wish to converse seriously with you, unless you are too much fatigued with your journey."

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Nay, father, I will hear you with pleasure now; you may speak before my friend without reserve."

"Then let me ask, Julio," said the palmer, "if you are still resolved to prosecute your enterprise ?"

"I am," replied the Count, somewhat sternly. "And you have reflected on all the consequences?"

"I have."

The palmer shook his head.

"Alas! my

son, it is as I thought; that restless spirit of yours scorns all advice, and loves to sport with danger, even for its own sake.”

"What is your advice, father? I will listen to it with reverence, although I cannot promise to follow it."

"Abandon all your hazardous projects, enter

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the service of your country, and devote yourself to her welfare," replied the palmer, earnestly.

"I will not serve a tyrant and a usurper-and such is the present ruler of Milan."

"A tyrant and a usurper!" rejoined the palmer. "Alas! my son, what is the history of man but a catalogue of folly and crime, with a few bright pages scattered here and there, which derive their lustre only from the darkness that surrounds them?"

"And are we then to give way to hopeless despondency?" replied the youthful enthusiast; "forgetting the mighty monuments the Egyptian has left behind him, which have outlived the very names of their founders; the Greek, with his insatiable thirst of knowledge, his immortal triumphs of genius, his indomitable hatred of oppression; the godlike ambition of the Roman, who sought to civilize the world he had subdued ?"

"Those monuments, my son, which both of us have seen, and you so much admire, were erected at the expense of the lives perhaps of millions: the Greek, though an enemy to oppression from without, was an ambitious tyrant

at home; and the Roman, wherever the lust of gold and conquest led him, to use the words of him who has held up, as in a mirror, the crimes of his rulers to the everlasting execration of mankind-but made a wilderness, and called it peace."

"But to leave these times, father, and turn to our own. No period can afford a more instructive lesson than the glorious struggles of our own forefathers with the usurpers of Germany."

"True, my son; the greatest nations have owed their foundation to the successful resistance of oppression; and I confess that republics are better calculated for the display both of virtue and talent than the rule of princes; yet they are ambitious in their projects, wavering in prosecuting them, ungrateful to their benefactors, and usually become at last the prey of the ambitious and the designing.”

"You accuse our republics of ingratitude, father, while you seem to forget that our princes fear their good subjects far more than their bad."

"Such, my son, has been the fate of greatness in every age. Even in our own days, have