The latter anecdote has undoubtedly an air of the marvellous; and yet the convulsions of nature have produced equally strange effects.

Stones have been thrown out of Mount AEtna to the distance of eighteen miles.
The earthquake was the forerunner of awful calamities; and it is possible that it might be physically connected with that memorable plague in 1348, which reached, in succession, all parts of the known world, and thinned the population of every country which it visited.
Historians generally agree that this great plague began in China and Tartary, whence, in the space of a year, it spread its desolation over the whole of Asia.

It extended itself over Italy early in 1348; but its severest ravages had not yet been made, when Petrarch returned from Verona to Parma in the month of March, 1348.

He brought with him his son John, whom he had withdrawn from the school of Rinaldo di Villa Franca, and placed under Gilberto di Parma, a good grammarian.

His motive for this change of tutorship probably was, that he reckoned on Parma being henceforward his own principal place of residence, and his wish to have his son beside him.
Petrarch had scarcely arrived at Parma when he received a letter from Luchino Visconti, who had lately received the lordship of that city.
Hearing of Petrarch's arrival there, the Prince, being at Milan, wrote to the poet, requesting some orange plants from his garden, together with a copy of verses.