ambitious of painting an apartment in Florence, one, I believe, of the Palazzo Pubblico. There remains a letter of his, in which he requests the Duke of Urbino to write to the Gonfaloniere Soderini, in April, 1508.[32] But his relative, Bramante, procured him a nobler employ in Rome, recommending him to Julius II. to ornament the Vatican. He removed thither, and was already established there in the September of the same year.[33] We at length, then, behold him fixed in Rome, and placed in the Vatican at a period, and under circumstances calculated to render him the first painter in the world. His biographers do not mention his literary attainments; and, if we were to judge from his letter just cited, and now in the Museo Borgia, we might consider him grossly illiterate. But he was then writing to his uncle; and therefore made use of his native dialect, as is still done even in the public acts in Venice; though he might be master of, and might use on proper occasions, a more correct language. Raffaello, too, was of a family fully competent to afford him the necessary instructions in his early years. Other letters of his are found in the _Lettere Pittoriche_, in a very different style; and of his knowledge in matters of importance, it is sufficient to refer to what Celio Calcagnini, an eminent literary character of the age of Leo, states of him to Giacomo Zieglero: "I need not," he says, "mention Vitruvius, whose precepts he not only explains, but defends or impugns with evident justice, and with so much temper, that in his objections there does not appear the slightest asperity. He has excited the admiration of the Pontiff Leo, and of all the Romans, in such a way, that they regard him as a man sent down from heaven purposely to restore the eternal city to its ancient splendour."[34] This acknowledged skill in architecture must suppose an adequate acquaintance with the Latin language and geometry; and we know from other quarters, that he assiduously cultivated anatomy, history, and poetry.[35] But his principal pursuit in Rome was the study of the remains of Grecian genius, and by which he perfected his knowledge of art. He studied, too, the ancient buildings, and was instructed in the principles of architecture for six years by Bramante, in order that on his death he might succeed him in the management of the building of S. Peter.[36] He lived among the ancient sculptors, and derived from them not only their contours and drapery, and attitudes, but the spirit and principles of the art itself. Nor yet content with what he saw in Rome, he employed artists to copy the remains of antiquity at Pozzuolo and throughout all Italy, and even in Greece. Nor did he derive less assistance from living artists whom he consulted on his compositions. "The universal esteem which he enjoyed,"[37] and his attractive person and engaging manners, which all accounts unite in describing as incomparable, conciliated him