“Among all these eminent men, the one that interested me most was unquestionably the Abbé, (afterwards Cardinal) Mezzofanti, who was then librarian at Bologna, and respecting whose astonishing power in languages I had heard the most extraordinary anecdotes. During a short excursion which I had previously made to Bologna, I had already got a glimpse of that celebrated man; but it was not until 1830 that I could be said to have seen him. I was presented to him by one of my friends, Count Bianchetti, and I was received by him with great kindness. He made me promise to go and see him again, and offered to show me the library. I accepted his offer eagerly; but it was principally in the hope of having a long conversation with him that I repaired to the library next day. Before going farther, I ought to say that I approached him with mixed feelings. Personally, I have always been disposed to respect and admire every man who possesses an incontestible superiority in any branch of human knowledge; and in this point of view, M. Mezzofanti, whom every body acknowledges to be the man who knew and could speak more languages than any other living man, had certainly a right to boundless admiration on my part. It was popularly reported at Bologna, that M. Mezzofanti, then fifty years old, knew as many languages as he counted years; and I had heard related in respect to him, by men in whose veracity I have full confidence, so many extraordinary histories, that he became in my eyes a sort of hero of legend or romance; but a hero of flesh and blood, who realized or even surpassed all the wonders attributed to Mithridates as a linguist. On the other hand, the liberal party, who certainly had no sympathies with the Abbé Mezzofanti, spread reports against him, by no means flattering; among which the one that had most frequently reached my ears, consisted in its being ceaselessly repeated, that the celebrated librarian at Bologna was a sort of parrot, endowed with the faculty of articulating sounds which he had heard, that he was only a miracle of memory, understanding having nothing to do with it; and that, independently of this trick of getting words by heart, this extraordinary man possessed no solid information, and little philological erudition. Without blindly adopting this bare assertion, I must acknowledge that the judgment passed on Mezzofanti by persons of some consideration, had made an impression upon my mind, far from being favourable to him: but that impression was soon dissipated in the course of the interview I had with him. Before leaving Florence, I had just read and carefully studied the treatise on Indefinite Algebra, composed several ages before by Brahmegupta, and which, translated and enriched with an admirable introduction