I have already said that the office of librarian brought him into contact with most of the strangers, especially of the literary class, who visited Bologna. In Bolognese society, too, he was more courted and sought after than his modest and retiring disposition would have desired. In the house of the Cardinal-Archbishop Opizzoni, and of the Cardinal Legates, Lanti, and Spina, he was always an honoured guest. With several of the noble families of the city, especially the Marescalchi, the Angelelli, the Amerini, and the Zambeccari, he lived on terms of the closest intimacy. The Cavaliere Pezzana mentions that when, on a visit to Bologna in 1817, he was dining at the first named palace, Mezzofanti came in uninvited, and almost as one of the family. At all these houses his opportunities of meeting foreigners of every race and language may easily be believed to have been frequent, and of the most various character. The earliest English visitor of the Abate Mezzofanti whom I have been able to discover is Mr. Harford, author of the recent “Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti,”[372] and proprietor of the valuable gallery of Blaise Castle, which Dr. Waagen describes in his “Treasures of Art in England.”[373] Mr. Harford visited Bologna in the autumn of 1817, at which time he first made Mezzofanti’s acquaintance. He renewed the acquaintance subsequently at Rome, and on both occasions had a full opportunity of observing and of testing his extraordinary gift of language. Mr. Harford has kindly communicated to me his recollections of Mezzofanti at both these periods of life, which, (although the latter part anticipates the order of time by nearly thirty years,) may most naturally be inserted together. “I first made the acquaintance of the Abbé Mezzofanti,” writes Mr. Harford, “at the table of Cardinal Lanti, brother of the Duke of Lanti, then Legate of Bologna. This was in the year 1817. The Cardinal was then living at the public palace at Bologna, but I had previously known him in Rome. He was a man of highly cultivated mind, and of gentlemanly and agreeable manners. He made his guests perfectly at their ease, and I well recollect, after dinner, forming one of a group around Abbé Mezzofanti, and listening with deep interest to his animated conversation, which had reference, in consequence of questions put to him, to various topics, illustrating his wonderful acquaintance with the principal languages of the world. Report, at this time, gave him credit for being master of upwards of forty languages; and I recollect, among other things, his giving proof of his familiar acquaintance with the Welsh. I had some particular conversation with him upon the origin of what is called Saxon, Norman, and Lombard architecture, and I remember his entire accordance with the opinion I threw out, that it resolved itself in each case into a corruption of Roman architecture.