My lord, among those arguments which you so well know how to urge, you have told me, that the cause you plead, is the cause of benevolence and charity. You say, that felicity would open our hearts, and teach our bosoms to overflow. But surely this is not the general progress of the human character. I had been taught to believe, and I hope I have found it true, that misfortune softens the disposition, and bids compassion take a deeper root. It shall be ever my aim, to make this improvement of those wasting sorrows, with which heaven has seen fit to visit me. For you, I am not to learn what is your generous and god like disposition. My lord, I will confess a circumstance, for which I know not whether I ought to blush. Animated by that sympathetic concern, which I once innocently took in all that related to you, I have made the most minute enquiries respecting your retreat at Leontini. I shall never be afraid, that the man, whose name dwells in the sweetest accents upon the lips of the distressed, and is the consolation and the solace of the helpless and the orphan, will degenerate into hardness. Go on, my lord! You are in the path of virtue. You are in the line that heaven chalked out for you. You will be the ornament of humanity, and your country's boast to the latest posterity.
End of Project Gutenberg's Italian Letters, Vols. I and II, by William Godwin