of a perfectly competent and perfectly trustworthy authority, on no other ground than the silence, on the subject, of these letters, seems altogether unreasonable and contrary to every principle of historical investigation. [Sidenote: THE GREEK PROFESSORSHIP.] There is, then, I think, no reason to discredit the assertion of Hubert Thomas, that a chair in Greek, which she was so eminently well qualified to occupy, was offered to Olympia by the Elector, who, finding that this celebrated and highly gifted Italian woman was to be his subject, and a resident in his capital, probably thought that he could in no manner contribute more to the renown and attractions of his University, than by imitating a step for which Italy, the great authority on matters of learning and literature, had already furnished more than one precedent. In a letter from Olympia to her sister, written immediately after their arrival at Heidelberg, on the silence of which as to the Greek professorship M. Bonnet, who erroneously supposes it to be written to Curione, specially rests his disbelief of any such proposal having been made, she thus announces to her correspondent their new prospects. "My husband," she writes, "has been called to Heidelberg, where we now are, by the most illustrious Prince Palatine, Elector of the Empire, to teach medicine in the public schools; although in this time of calamitous and turbulent tempest, arms are more in request than science." Yet, had it not been for the consequences of the sufferings endured that fatal night of the flight from Schweinfurth, the aspects of the life now before them might have seemed brighter than any that had hitherto been their lot. Heidelberg was at that time, perhaps the most flourishing and important centre of intellectual movement and learning in Germany. Its University held the highest rank, and its professors numbered among them several of the most distinguished names of Transalpine Europe. A professional chair among such colleagues was no mean promotion. Next to health, the most irreparable loss in the Schweinfurth catastrophe was that of the library. And we find their friends exerting themselves to repair, as far as possible, this disaster. By a singular chance, one volume, the Lives of Plutarch, belonging to their former library, was recovered to form the nucleus of a new collection. It had been found among the ruins at Schweinfurth, with the name of Olympia written on the last page; and John Sinapi had the pleasure of sending it to her with a letter of consolations and exhortations to fortitude under the calamities to which they had been exposed. [Sidenote: LETTER FROM CURIONE.]