CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 49 



belong to law. Law treats of local custom, medicine of 

 truths common to the whole world, and to all ages. 

 Medicine is the nobler as well as the safer ground, he 

 said, on which to build a lasting fame, since its inquiries 

 are concerned only with pure reason, with the eternal law 

 of nature, not with the opinions of men. Swayed by such 

 arguments the bold student determined to give up every 

 design of following upon his father's track, and abandoned 

 expectation of his stipend of a hundred scudi. 



Fazio, failing now in health, withdrew his opposition, 

 and Jerome, having missed one academic course while 

 the armies concerned in the quarrel between Charles V. 

 and Francis I. were creating more than common tumult 

 in the country, went in the next year, he being twenty- 

 three years old, not again to Pa via, but to Padua. 



Absence had softened the feelings of old Fazio towards 

 his son 1 . Very soon after his first departure, reconcilia- 

 tion had been effected between Fazio and Clara; and al- 

 though the old man, during the four last years of his life, 

 maintained a morose countenance 2 , his last days proved 



huic proposito conducebant quam legum: et ut propiora fini, et ut 

 orbi communia toti, et omnibus saeculis : tamen ut candidiora, ac quae 

 ration! (seternse naturae legi) non hominum opinionibus inniterentur : 

 ideo haec ipsa amplexatus sum, non jurisprudentia." De Vit. Propr. 

 p. 47. 



" Desiderium augente absentia mortuus est pater." De Consola- 

 tione, p. 75. 



3 " Supervixit quatuor ferine annis, msestus semper vixit ut declara- 

 Terit quantum me amaret." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 430. 



VOL. I. E 



