and was enabled, as occasion required, to conceive the boldest enterprises, and to execute them with the most heroic courage. He who languished, sighed, and even wept with unmanly softness, at the feet of his mistress, breathing only the tender and affectionate language of gentle love, no sooner turned his thoughts toward the transactions of Rome, than he assumed a higher tone, and not only wrote, but acted with all the strength and spirit of the Augustan age. Monarchs have relinquished the calls of hunger, and the charms of rest, to indulge the tender luxuries his love-lorn muse afforded. But at a more advanced age he was no longer a sighing minstrel, chaunting amorous verses to a relentless fair; he was no longer an effeminate slave, that kissed the chains of an imperious mistress, who treated him with disdain: he became a zealous republican, who spread by his writings the spirit of liberty throughout Italy, and sounded a loud alarm against tyranny and tyrants. Great as a statesman, profound and judicious as a public minister, he was consulted in the most important political transactions of Europe, and frequently employed in the most arduous and difficult negotiations. Zealously active in the cause of humanity, he anxiously endeavored, on occasions, to extinguish the torch of discord. The greatest princes, conscious of his extraordinary genius, solicited his company, and endeavored, by listening to his precepts, to learn the noble art of rendering their countries respectable, and their people happy. These traits of Petrarch’s character clearly evince that, oppressed as he was by the passion of love, he derived great advantages from solitude. The retirement at Vaucluse was not, as is commonly imagined, a pretence to be nearer the person of Laura, for Laura resided altogether at Avignon; but a means of avoiding the frown of his mistress, and of flying from the contagion of a corrupt court. Seated in his little garden, which was situated at the foot of a lofty mountain, and surrounded by a rapid stream, his soul rose superior to the adversities of his fate. His disposition, indeed, was naturally restless and unquiet; but in his tranquil moments, a sound judgment, joined to an exquisite sensibility, enabled him to enjoy the delights of solitude with singular advantage; and to find in his retreat at Vaucluse, the temple of peace, the residence of calm repose, and a safe harbor against all the tempests of the soul. The flame of love, therefore, although it cannot be entirely extinguished, may be greatly purified and refined by solitude. Man indeed, ought not to extirpate the passions which the God of nature has planted in the human heart, but to direct them to their proper ends. To avoid such miseries as Petrarch endured, the pleasures of retirement should be shared with some amiable female, who, better than the cold precepts of philosophy, will beguile or banish, by the charms of conversation, all the cares and torments of life.