er affections being
unoccupied, she did not discourage the attentions of my father, who
was one of the most elegant and accomplished men of his time, and
blended the grace of a courtier with the free and gallant bearing of a
distinguished commander. The dormant sensibilities of Isabella were
soon awakened by the enthusiastic fervour of his attachment; and their
secret intelligence had subsisted some time, when it was discovered
by the jealous and vindictive Cosmo. My unfortunate parent was
immediately arrested and imprisoned, but effected his escape, fled to
Venice, and from thence to the Levant. His estates were confiscated
under the pretext of treasonable practices; and I found a refuge and a
home under the roof of my widowed aunt, Veronica Della Torre.

"The heartless and meretricious Isabella relinquished my father
without a sigh, or a struggle to save him, and consoled herself with
court-pageantry, and a succession of new lovers, many of whom
were sacrificed by her cunning and ruthless father. As a selfish
voluptuary, and the destroyer of his country's liberty, Cosmo has
been compared with Augustus; but in gratuitous and deliberate cruelty,
he far surpasses his prototype.

"I was indebted to neglect and accident for the best of all XXXX
educations. My father loved and cherished me; but his domestic
calamity, his frequent absences from Florence, and, subsequently,
his pursuit of Isabella, interfered with the customary course of
education, and saved me from the despotism of a regular tutor, and
from the debasing tyranny, the selfish and vulgar profligacy, of those
institutions of monkery called public academies.

"It was surely the intention of Providence that the faculties of early
life should not be strained by labours hostile to the healthful growth
of mind and body, and that the heart, the senses, and the principles
should alone be tutored in the first ten years of life. And yet how
egregiously has the folly of the creature perverted the benevolent
purpose of the Creator! With thoughtless, heartless indifference he
commits his tender offspring to the crushing tyranny of pedants and
task-masters, who rack and stupify the imperfect brain by vain
attempts to convey dead languages through a dead medium, and inflict
upon their helpless pupils the occult mysteries of grammar, which
is the philosophy of language, and intelligible only to ripened
faculties. Ask the youth who has toiled in prostration of spirit
throug