many of the half explored languages of the northern and southern continents of America; and more than one of the rude jargons of north and north-eastern Africa, may be found habitually domiciled within its walls. In the year 1837, when Dr. Wap, a Dutch traveller, who has written well and learnedly on Rome, visited the establishment, the hundred and fourteen students who appeared upon its register, comprised no less than forty-one distinct nationalities.[440] Amid the vast variety of speech with which he was thus brought habitually into contact, Mezzofanti, even if he had desired to “economize” his reputed gifts, could not possibly have done so without provoking a suspicion of their questionableness, or at least of their superficial character. Nor, on the other hand, would he have ventured to expose the undeniable reputation which he had already established, although upon a provincial theatre, to the ordeal which awaited him in the great centre of languages, living or dead, had he not been supported by the consciousness of the reality of his attainments, as well as attracted by the very prospect of increased facilities for pursuing and extending the researches which had been the business and the enjoyment of his life. At all events, we shall see that from the first moment of his establishment in Rome, so far from having “economized” his extraordinary faculty of language, he was most assiduous, and in truth prodigal, in its exercise. Immediately on his arrival he was appointed canon of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. This, however, was but an earnest of the intentions of the Pope, who, from the first, destined him for the highest honours of the Roman Church. It is clear, nevertheless, from his correspondence, that his affections still clung to his beloved Bologna. On occasion of his first new year in his new residence, he received many letters from his old friends, conveying to him the ordinary new year’s greetings. From his reply to one of these letters which was addressed to him by a friend, Signor Michele Ferrucci, professor of Eloquence in the university, we may gather how warm and cordial were the attachments which he had left behind. _Rome, January 4, 1852._