A still more marvellous tale is told by a popular American writer, Mr. Headley, whom his transatlantic admirers have styled the “Addison of America;” that while Mezzofanti “was still an obscure priest in the north of Italy, he was called one day to confess two foreigners condemned for piracy, who were to be executed next day. On entering their cell, he found them unable to understand a word he uttered. Overwhelmed with the thought that the criminals should leave the world without the benefits of religion, he returned to his room, resolved to acquire the language before morning. He accomplished his task, and next day confessed them in their own tongue! From that time on, he had no trouble in mastering the most difficult language. The purity of his motive in the first instance, he thought, influenced the Deity to assist him miraculously.”[273] This strange tale Mr. Headley relates, on the authority of a priest, a friend of Mezzofanti; and he goes so far as to say, that “Mezzofanti himself attributed his power of acquiring languages to the divine influence.”[274] The imagination might dwell with pleasure upon these and similar tales of wonder; but, happily for the moral lesson which it is the best privilege of biography to convey, the true history of the early studies of Mezzofanti, (although while falling far short of these marvels, it is too wonderful to be held out as a model even for the most aspiring) is, nevertheless, such as to show that the most gifted themselves can only hope to attain to true eminence by patient and systematic industry. Far from being entirely neglected, as these tales would imply, Mezzofanti’s education commenced at an unusually early period. His parents— A virtuous household, but exceeding poor, conscious of their own want of learning, appear, from the very first, to have bestowed upon the education of their son all the care which their narrow circumstances permitted. According to an account obtained from the Cavaliere Minarelli, he was sent, while a mere child, not yet three years old, to a dame’s school, more, it would seem, for security, than for actual instruction. Being deemed too young to be regularly taught, he was here left for a time to sit in quiet and amuse himself as best he could, while the other children were receiving instruction; but the mistress soon discovered that the child, although excluded from the lessons of his elders, had learned without any effort, all that had been communicated to them, and was able to repeat promptly and accurately the tasks which she had dictated. He was accordingly admitted to the regular classes; and, child as he was, passed rapidly through the various elementary branches of instruction, to which alone her humble school extended.