The basis of the system of education consisted in strict imprisonment, little sleep, and unwholesome food. To this was added a certain degree of parrot knowledge of the Latin language: the boys were taught to construe Cornelius Nepos; but so little pains were taken, or, rather, so little power was there in their instructors to enlarge their stores of real knowledge, that Alfieri tells us, that not one of them knew who the men were whose lives they read; nor what the country, government, or times were in which they lived, nor even what thing government was. The boy made progress, however, in what he was taught: his emulation was excited, and his memory was cultivated; but, on the other hand, he grew sickly and stunted in growth, the effects of bad food and too little sleep. He had only his drunken, his dissipated servant to attend on him when he was ill; who often, on such occasions, left him half the day alone, which increased the constitutional melancholy of his disposition. His pleasures were few; and the want of all affectionate treatment blighted his life. It seems strange to us that his mother did not visit him, and that he never went home for a vacation: but such were the customs of the country, and he was brought up in conformity with them. The spirit of emulation, caused him, in some degree, to distinguish himself, and he advanced to higher classes and attended lectures on philosophy, humanity, and mathematics; but such was the style in which they were taught, that, when he had gone through six books of Euclid, he was unable to demonstrate the fourth proposition; and, though he studied a whole year under the famous Beccaria, he did not comprehend a word of what he was taught. This is the less extraordinary, since, speaking the patois of Piedmont, Italian was as a foreign language; and, though he contrived to obtain a copy of Ariosto, he was unable to understand a word of it. His teachers were, for the most part, equally ignorant; so that while his time was devoted to Latin, his native language was a sealed book to him. He had a few relations at Turin, and when he became really ill, they interfered that he should have more sleep and better food; but he continued a puny and ailing boy.