[Footnote 81: The exile of Avignon is compared by the
Italians with Babylon, and the Babylonish captivity. Such
furious metaphors, more suitable to the ardor of Petrarch
than to the judgment of Muratori, are gravely refuted in
Baluze's preface. The abbe de Sade is distracted between the
love of Petrarch and of his country. Yet he modestly
pleads, that many of the local inconveniences of Avignon are
now removed; and many of the vices against which the poet
declaims, had been imported with the Roman court by the
strangers of Italy, (tom. i. p. 23 - 28.)]