When Poggio, smiling at these remarks of Niccolo, is preparing to reply to them, he is interrupted by his friend Carlo, who begs from him permission to undertake the management of the cause of the aged gentlemen who become the votaries of Hymen; and, this being granted to him, he begins his speech by making a personal attack upon Niccolo, who, he alleges, has declined to enter into the married state by an unreasonable timidity of spirit, and an unaccommodating austerity of temper. But if all men were to follow his example, they would manifestly act in disobedience to the first law of nature, which provides for the continued propagation of the human species, and they would moreover grossly neglect the duty which they owe to the state to which they belong, which demands from them that succession of virtuous citizens by whom alone its rights and liberties can be maintained. As to the cares and avocations of matrimony breaking in upon literary occupations, Carlo reminds his adversary that this was not the case with Plato, with Aristotle, with Theophratus, Cato the elder, Cicero, and many others of the ancients distinguished by the extent of their learning. Matrimony also, which Niccolo has vilified as a species of servitude, preserves a man from that licentiousness of conduct which is the worst kind of slavery in which he can be enthralled. Moreover, if any elderly man be united to a young woman, his wisdom will be a guide to her inexperience—his prudence will teach her to restrain her appetites, and his example will in every case afford her instruction and encouragement in the regulation of her conduct in life. On Niccolo’s appealing with a smile to the experience of Carlo himself, and asking him whether he has not known old men who have been more foolish than boys, and whether people of this description are not very unsafe guides in the discharge of moral and political duties, the latter replies that he pleads not on the behalf of foolish people of any age; but that he is ready to assert as a general principle, that the matrimonial union is singularly well adapted to promote the happiness of an elderly man. Young folks, he says, are unable to regulate themselves; much less are they qualified to govern others. What, then, will be the consequence of an union of two parties, each of which is totally inexperienced in the management of human affairs, but the pressure of poverty, and its attendant train of miseries? But the man who is ripe in years will support the weakness of his wife, and instruct her ignorance in the ordering of their domestic concerns, and will abate in her the effervescence of passion by the inculcation of the lessons of virtue.