The Countess of Blessington, in the third volume of her “Idler in Italy,” has given an account of her intercourse with Mezzofanti during this year. She adds but little to the facts already known as to Mezzofanti’s linguistic attainments; but it may not be uninteresting to contrast with the ponderous and matter of fact sketches of the professional scholars whom we have hitherto been considering, the lighter, but in many respects more striking portraiture of a lady visitor, less capable of estimating the solidity of his learning, but more alive to the minor peculiarities of his manner, to the more delicate shades of his character and disposition, and to the thousand minuter specialities, which, after all, go to form our idea of the man. Lady Blessington had been present at the solemn mass in the church of St. Petronius at Bologna on the morning of the Festival of the Assumption. An adventure which befel her at the close of the ceremony led to her first meeting with the great linguist, which she thus pleasantly describes. “While viewing the procession beneath the arcades, I was inadvertently separated from my party, and found myself hurried along by the crowd, hemmed in at all sides by a moving mass of strangers who seemed to eye me with much curiosity. To disentangle myself from the multitude would have been a difficult, if not an impossible task; and I confess I experienced a certain degree of trepidation, inseparable from a woman’s feelings, at finding myself alone in the midst of a vast throng not one face of which I had ever previously seen. Great then was my satisfaction at hearing the simple remark of ‘We have had a very fine day for the fête,’ uttered in English, and with as good a pronunciation as possible, by a person having the air and dress of a clergyman, to another who answered: ‘Yes, nothing could be more propitious than the weather.’ Though it is always embarrassing to address a stranger, the sound of my own language, and the position in which I was placed, gave me courage to touch the arm of the first speaker, and to state, that being separated from my party, I must request the protection of my countryman. He turned round, saluted me graciously, said that, though not a countryman, he would gladly assist me to rejoin my party, and immediately placed me between him and his companion. ‘You speak English perfectly, yet are not an Englishman!’ said I. ‘Then you can be no other than professor Mezzofanti?’ Both he and his companion smiled, and he answered; ‘My name _is_ Mezzofanti.’