This letter, which bears the date of the sixth of February, 1436, was written in the course of that halcyon period, during the continuance of which the fetters of matrimony are usually entwined with flowers, and unmixed pleasure is supposed to be the almost certain portion of the newly united pair. In the strictness of investigation, therefore, it cannot be admitted as evidence of the happiness which Poggio enjoyed in the married state. Hymeneal transports, however ardent, are proverbially fleeting; and many a matrimonial union which has commenced in affection, has been found productive of disgust. From various detached passages, however, which occur in his future correspondence with his friends, it appears that Poggio was not disappointed in his hopes of conjugal felicity, and that his connexion with Vaggia was a source of comfort to his declining years. On the eighteenth of April, [A. D. 1436.] Eugenius quitted Florence, and transferred the pontifical court to Bologna, whither he was accompanied by Poggio, who soon after his arrival there, detailed his further experience of the joys of wedded love in the following letter to the cardinal of St. Angelo. “You have frequently, most reverend father, exhorted me, both in conversation and by letter, to adopt some settled course of life. I have at length followed your advice. Two plans were proposed to my consideration: to enter into the priesthood, or to pursue some secular concern—To the ecclesiastical profession I always entertained an invincible objection—I disliked solitude; and therefore, being determined to enter upon civil life, I turned my mind to matrimony. I do not deny that the clerical life is by many esteemed more peaceable and tranquil than that which I have chosen. It is, indeed, generally regarded as free from care, and as allowing the greatest scope to ease and self-indulgence.—The opulence which it promises to confer is also a powerful motive to impel men to the adoption of it—a much more powerful one, indeed, than any considerations of a religious or moral nature. For what numbers are there whose inquiry is directed after wealthy benefices rather than after the rule of an upright life. It is deemed honourable amongst mortals to excel others in pomp, to be flattered and courted by the multitude, to abound in riches, which procure that outward splendour which is generally thought to constitute dignity. And it is deemed still more honourable to obtain these advantages without labour, and in a short time. Hence the clergy, springing like mushrooms in an hour, are rapidly advanced to the highest dignities. Thus it very frequently happens, that you are obliged to venerate as a God, a man whom you have been accustomed to despise as a mean, abject, ignoble, and ill-bred character. By one word of the pontiff, the ignorant become, in the estimation of the vulgar, learned; the stupid wise; the uninstructed accomplished—though at