what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it
is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that
no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless
he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength
to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that
belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than
falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow
sacred; _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in
struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the
highest deeds they are capable of, And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act
nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men,
you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will
happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose
something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own
pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just
the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the
one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man
say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I
will tell you something, Lillo."

Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands,
and his young eyes were meeting hers.

"There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great
deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was
young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle
and kind. I believe when I first knew him, he never thought of anything
cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that
was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety,
he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such as make men
infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed
every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe
and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him."

Aside from this altruistic teaching which is developed in connection with
the life of Romola, the doctrine of retribution is vigorously unfolded
in the history of Tito Melema. The effects of selfishness and personal
self-seeking have nowhere been so wonderfully st