principles of virtue, and endeavour to palliate their very crimes by attributing the commission of them to good motives. This last remark gives Carlo occasion to detail several scandalous anecdotes of certain ecclesiastics, who, under the cloak of religious austerity, had indulged themselves in the most abominable gratification of their appetites. In the sequel of his speech, Carlo utters an eloquent invective against the ambition of the clergy who then frequented the Roman court. Poggio, concurring with him in sentiment, attacks the popular preachers of that time. He next animadverts upon the begging friars, the confessors, and the ecclesiastics who pretend to an extraordinary degree of temperance and maceration of the flesh. In speaking of this last description of hypocrites, he relates an anecdote of an Augustine friar, who undertook to subsist for eight days upon the holy wafer used in the Eucharist, and who actually quitted his cell at the end of the prescribed term in perfectly good health, and without the least diminution of his corpulency. This impostor gained great celebrity by his apparently miraculous abstinence; but after the lapse of some years it was discovered, that in spite of the vigilance of his guards, he had conveyed into his apartment a quantity of bread saturated with wine, which he had injected into his large leathern girdle, and that he had moreover provided himself with candles composed of sugar, slightly coated over with wax, which afforded him a plentiful supply of nourishment. When Poggio has finished his remarks, Carlo attacks the _Fratres Observantiæ_; and the remainder of the dialogue is occupied by strictures on the character and conduct of several individuals, who, during the time of Poggio’s residence in the Roman court, had distinguished themselves by the gravity of their demeanour, and by the sanctity of their religious profession.[383]