them with his accustomed pedantry.  He pronounces a grand eulogy on the numbers of the fair sex who had distinguished themselves by their virtues and their courage.  Among these he instances Isis, Carmenta, the mother of Evander, Sappho, the Sybils, the Amazons, Semiramis, Tomiris, Cleopatra, Zenobia, the Countess Matilda, Lucretia, Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, Martia, Portia, and Livia.  The Empress Anne was no doubt highly edified by this muster-roll of illustrious women; though some of the heroines, such as Lucretia, might have bridled up at their chaste names being classed with that of Cleopatra.

Petrarch repaired to Linterno, on the 1st of October, 1359; but his stay there was very short.  The winter set in sooner than usual.  The constant rains made his rural retreat disagreeable, and induced him to return to the city about the end of the month.

On rising, one morning, soon after his return to Milan, he found that he had been robbed of everything valuable in his house, excepting his books.  As it was a domestic robbery, he could accuse nobody of it but his son John and his servants, the former of whom had returned from Avignon.  On this, he determined to quit his house at St. Ambrosio, and to take a small lodging in the city; here, however, he could not live in peace.  His son and servants quarrelled every day, in his very presence, so violently that they exchanged blows.  Petrarch then lost all patience, and turned the whole of his pugnacious inmates out of doors.  His son John had now become an arrant debauchee; and it was undoubtedly to supply his debaucheries that he pillaged his own father.  He pleaded strongly to be readmitted to his home; but Petrarch persevered for some time in excluding him, though he ultimately took him back.

It appears from one of Petrarch’s letters, that many people at Milan doubted his veracity about the story of the robbery, alleging that it was merely a pretext to excuse his inconstancy in quitting his house at St. Ambrosio; but that he was capable of accusing his own son on false grounds is a suspicion which the whole character of Petrarch easily repels.  He went and settled himself in the monastery of St. Simplician, an abbey of the Benedictines of Monte Cassino, pleasantly situated without the walls of the city.

He was scarcely established in his new home at St. Simplician’s, when Galeazzo Visconti arrived in triumph at Milan, after having taken possession of Pavia.  The capture of this city much augmented the power of the Lords of Milan; and nothing was wanting to their satisfaction but the secure addition to their dominions of Bologna, to which Barnabo Visconti was laying siege, although John of Olegea had given it up to the Church in consideration of a pension and the possession of the city of Fermo.