the juvenile indiscretion of his son. Then appealing to the remorse and penitence of the prince, he urges the offended father to receive the returning prodigal with kindness; and, descending from the flights of eloquence to the plain level of prudential consideration, he concludes his letter by admonishing the Marquis, that if he should persevere in his design of disinheriting his eldest born son, that son had proved by his late conduct that he was too high spirited to submit to the threatened indignity, and that, however submissive he might be during his father’s life, the death of the Marquis would be the signal of a civil war, which would lay waste the Mantuan territory, and which would only terminate with the shameful victory of one of his children over the other, or with the ruin of both. When Poggio had finished the composition of this letter, he in the first instance consigned it to the care of Vittorino da Feltre, a scholar of high reputation, who then held the confidential office of preceptor to the sons of Gonzaga, requesting him to watch for some favourable moment for presenting it to his patron. This very precaution should seem to intimate, that Poggio felt a latent consciousness that the liberty which he was taking in assuming the office of a monitor, might possibly not be very acceptable to the distinguished personage to whom his admonition was addressed. And yet, such was the pride of scholarship in the fifteenth century, that when, at the end of two months, his letter was returned to him by Vittorino, with an intimation that Gonzaga declined receiving it, Poggio addressed a second letter to the unrelenting father, protesting that he had been influenced, in requesting his attention to wholesome lessons of advice, not by any selfish motives, but by his zeal for the welfare of a sovereign prince, from whom he unequivocally declared that he thought himself entitled, in consideration of his good offices, to a return of gratitude rather than of contempt. At the same time he wrote to Vittorino, expostulating with him for the want of zeal, which he had evinced with regard to the commission with which he had entrusted him; and understanding that Carlo Brognolo, an intimate acquaintance of his, resident at the Mantuan court, had endeavoured to induce the Marquis to excuse the liberty which he had taken in writing to him, he wrote to him also, thanking him for his friendly intentions; but at the same time protesting, that he had only addressed the sovereign of Mantua by letter in the manner in which, had an opportunity presented itself, he would have addressed him personally, namely, in a style and tone becoming the citizen of a free state.