On withdrawing his pupil from the exercise of this fascinating art. Gravina became aware that his education could not be carried on with success amidst the pleasures and idleness of his life at Rome; and he sent him to study under his cousin Camporese, who lived near the ancient Cortona, a town of Magna Græcia, famous in antiquity for its schools of philosophy. Metastasio was very happy at this period of his life; and, in a letter written at an advanced age, he recurs to it with yearning fondness. "Of how many dear and pleasing ideas, my friend," he writes to Don Saverio Mattei, "you have awakened the recollection, by causing me to go over in my thoughts the happy time I spent, not less usefully than delightfully, between boyhood and adolescence, in Magna Græcia. I saw again as if they were present all those objects which pleased me so much at that time. Again I inhabited the little chamber, in which the sound of the breakers of the neighbouring sea so often lulled me into the sweetest sleep; and, by force of my imagination, I revisited in my boat the shores of neighbouring Scalea; and the names and aspects of many places recurred to me, before forgotten. I heard again the venerable voice of the renowned philosopher Camporese; who, stooping to instruct one so young, led me, as it were, by the hand among the vortexes of the then reigning Descartes, of whom he was a strenuous advocate, and attracted my boyish curiosity, by showing me in wax, as if in a game, how globules were formed from atoms, and filling me with admiration of the bewitching experiments of philosophy. It seems to me as if I again saw him labouring to persuade me that his dog was formed upon the same principle as a watch; and that the trinal dimension is a sufficient definition of solid bodies. And I behold him smile, when, having kept me long plunged in a dark reverie, by forcing me to doubt of every thing, he perceived that I breathed again, on his assertion, 'I think, therefore, I am;' the invincible proof of a certainty which I had despaired of ever again attaining." Camporese died, unfortunately, in the midst of these studies, and Metastasio returned to Rome. [Sidenote: 1718. Ætat. 20.]