An undersized man, somewhat disposed towards corpulency, in a violet cassock falling to the ancle, and a white surplice which reached to the knee, came briskly, almost hurriedly, towards us. He carried his four-cornered violet cap in his hand, and thus I was better able to note his lively, though not striking features, and his grey hair still mingled with black. About his lips played a smile, which I afterwards observed to be their habitual expression. He appeared to be not far from sixty. When he came sufficiently near, I advanced to meet him with a silent bow, and he at once received me with the greeting in German, ‘_Seyn Sie mir willkommen!_’ (‘You are welcome.’) ‘I am surprised, Monsignor,’ I replied, ‘that you address me in German, although I have not spoken a word as yet.’ ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘a great many foreigners of all countries come to visit me, and I have acquired a certain routine—pardon me, I should have said a certain ‘knack,’ (die Routine—verzeihen sie, ‘die gewandtheit’ sollte ich sagen,—) of discovering their nationality from their physiognomy, or rather from their features.’ ‘I am sorry, Monsignor,’ I replied, ‘that it is my ill fortune to belie this knack of yours. I am a native of Bohemia, although not of Bohemian race, and Bohemian is my mother tongue.’ ‘To what nationality, then, do you belong?’ asked Mezzofanti in Bohemian, without a moment’s hesitation.” He afterwards changed the language to Hebrew. Frankl adds, that on a second visit to the reading room of the Vatican, he found the gay animated Monsignor in the ordinary black dress of a priest; and took this opportunity to present him a copy of his “Colombo,” in which he had written the inscription, “_Dem Sprachen-chamæleon Mezzofanti._” (“To Mezzofanti, the Chameleon of language”.) “‘Ha,’ said Mezzofanti, with a smile, ‘I have had numberless compliments paid me; but this is a spick and span new one,’ (funkelnagel-neu.) Upon this word he laid a special emphasis, as if to call my attention to his well known familiarity with unusual words. ‘I see,’ he continued, ‘you have adopted the Italian form of cantos and stanzas.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘the Germans nowadays, for the most part, do homage to the Italian forms.’ ‘At last!’ said he, with a smile not unmixed with triumph. ‘Schlegel, Bürger, and Platen,’ I said, ‘have written sonnets quite as harmonious as Petrarch’s, and Tasso’s stanza has found its rival among the Germans.’ ‘Well, at all events,’ replied Mezzofanti, ‘the Germans have not succeeded in hexameters. Klopstock’s are incorrect and inharmonious. What harmony is there in the line:—