At the same time, whilst Vaucluse threw recollections tender, though melancholy, over Petrarch’s mind, it does not appear that Avignon had assumed any new charm in his absence:  on the contrary, he found it plunged more than ever in luxury, wantonness, and gluttony.  Clement VI. had replenished the church, at the request of the French king, with numbers of cardinals, many of whom were so young and licentious, that the most scandalous abominations prevailed amongst them.  “At this time,” says Matthew Villani, “no regard was paid either to learning or virtue; and a man needed not to blush for anything, if he could cover his head with a red hat.  Pietro Ruggiero, one of those exemplary new cardinals, was only eighteen years of age.”  Petrarch vented his indignation on this occasion in his seventh eclogue, which is a satire upon the Pontiff and his cardinals, the interlocutors being Micione, or Clement himself, and Epi, or the city of Avignon.  The poem, if it can be so called, is clouded with allegory, and denaturalized with pastoral conceits; yet it is worth being explored by any one anxious to trace the first fountains of reform among Catholics, as a proof of church abuses having been exposed, two centuries before the Reformation, by a Catholic and a churchman.

At this crisis, the Court of Avignon, which, in fact, had not known very well what to do about the affairs of Rome, were now anxious to inquire what sort of government would be the most advisable, after the fall of Rienzo.  Since that event, the Cardinal Legate had re-established the ancient government, having created two senators, the one from the house of Colonna, the other from that of the Orsini.  But, very soon, those houses were divided by discord, and the city was plunged into all the evils which it had suffered before the existence of the Tribuneship.  “The community at large,” says Matthew Villani, “returned to such condition, that strangers and travellers found themselves like sheep among wolves.”  Clement VI. was weary of seeing the metropolis of Christianity a prey to anarchy.  He therefore chose four cardinals, whose united deliberations might appease these troubles, and he imagined that he could establish in Rome a form of government that should be durable.  The cardinals requested Petrarch to give his opinion on this important affair.  Petrarch wrote to them a most eloquent epistle, full of enthusiastic ideas of the grandeur of Rome.  It is not exactly known what effect he produced by his writing on this subject; but on that account we are not to conclude that he wrote in vain.

Petrarch had brought to Avignon his son John, who was still very young.  He had obtained for him a canonicate at Verona.  Thither he immediately despatched him, with letters to Guglielmo di Pastrengo and Rinaldo di Villa Franca, charging the former of these friends to superintend his son’s general character and manners, and the other to cultivate his understanding.  Petrarch, in his letter to Rinaldo,