Enlarging on these ideas, and more particularly analyzing Niccolo’s objections to the marriage of men advanced in years, Carlo boldly maintains, that it is expedient for a person of this description not only to marry, but also to marry a young woman, whom he may mold like wax to his will. As to sensual indulgences—whilst so many examples are seen of the total abstinence from them which is practised in convents and nunneries, why should any doubt be entertained, that a well-instructed female will cheerfully submit to that restricted enjoyment of them which circumstances may demand from her? As to the little likelihood of an aged parent living to see his offspring settled in the world, Carlo demurs to the fact, and asserts that longevity is fully as likely to follow upon the temperance of mature age as upon the careless dissoluteness of youth. “But granting,” says he, “that the remaining years of an old man are few in number, will he not, nevertheless, derive the greatest pleasure from his children, whom it will be a gratification to him to train to good manners, at a period when they are much more disposed to revere their parent, and to obey him, than they are likely to be when growing strength and self-confidence shall have rendered them more independent of parental controul?” Fortifying his doctrine by the test of facts, Carlo appeals, in proof of the soundness of the principles which he is maintaining, not only to the domestic history of Cato the Elder and of Cicero, but still more especially to that of Galeazzo Malatesta, who, having married a young wife in the seventy-fourth year of his age, left behind him at his death four sons, who became the most illustrious men of all Italy, and one of whom, Carlo, was no less celebrated for his literary accomplishments than for his prowess in war.—“These illustrious characters,” says he, “were, indeed, virtuous by nature; but they were not a little indebted for the renown which they obtained in their maturer years, to the instructions which they received in their early youth from their father. The wise exhortations of an aged parent have, in my opinion,” continues he, “great efficacy in the right training of children—a greater efficacy, indeed, than if they fell from the lips of persons of unripe years—for it is to advanced age that we look for gravity and experience.” After enlarging on this topic, Carlo draws from his reasonings the conclusion, that both on public and on private grounds, it is expedient that elderly men should quit the state of celibacy, and that they should marry youthful wives. “It is,” he observes, “an unspeakable advantage in life, for a man to have a partner to whom, as to a second self, he may communicate his counsels and his joys, and who, by sympathizing in, may mitigate his sorrows. Nor is it to be doubted,” says he, “that a wife of this description will continue to love her husband as long as he loves her,