missiles flung at him and the ribaldry with which he is assailed. The manners and conversation of the students must have been disgusting beyond measure, to judge by a letter of complaint from a father detailing the contamination to which his son was exposed in the Roman class-rooms, and the immunity with which the lewdest songs were publicly recited there.[142] But the total degradation of learning at this epoch in Rome is best described in one paragraph of Vittorio de'Rossi, setting forth the neglect endured by Aldo Manuzio, the younger. This scion of an illustrious family succeeded to the professorship of Muretus in 1588. 'Then,' says Rossi, 'might one marvel at or rather mourn over, the abject and down-trodden state of the liberal arts. Then might one perceive with tears how those treasures of humane letters, which our fathers exalted to the heavens, were degraded in the estimation of youth. In the good old days men crossed the seas, undertook long journeys, traversed the cities of Greece and Asia, in order to obtain the palm of eloquence and salute the masters of languages and learning, at whose feet they sat entranced by noble words. But now these fellows poured scorn upon an unrivaled teacher of both Greek and Latin eloquence, whose services were theirs for the asking, theirs without the fatigue of travel, without expense, without exertion. Though he freely offered them his abundance of erudition in both learned literatures, they shut their ears against him. At the hours when his lecture-room should have been thronged with multitudes of eager pupils you might see him, abandoned by the crowd, pacing the pavement before the door of the academy with one, or may be two, for his companions.'[143] [Footnote 140: Dejob, _Marc Antoine Muret_, p. 349.] [Footnote 141: The original is printed by Dejob, _Marc Antoine Muret_, pp. 487-489.] [Footnote 142: The original letter, printed by Dejob, _op. cit._ p. 491, is signed by Giustiniano Finetti, who seems to have been a professor of medicine in the Roman University. His son, a youth of sixteen, complained that the students had demanded and obtained leave to recite a certain 'lettione che era carnavalesca d'ano et de priapo,' adding that they were in the habit of holding debates upon the thesis that (LATIN: 'res sodcae erant praeferendae veneri naturali, et reprobabant rem veneream cum feminis ac audabant masturbationem.') The dialogue which the students obtained leave publicly to recite was probably similar to one that might still be heard some years ago in spring upon the quays of Naples, and which appeared to have descended from immemorial antiquity.] [Footnote 143: The Latin text is printed in Renouard's _Imprimerie des Aldes_, p. 473.]