“Of middle size and somewhat stooping in his gait,” writes M. Fleck, “Mezzofanti’s appearance is nevertheless agreeable and benevolent. Since he has been Prefect of the Vatican in Mai’s stead, I have had occasion to see him daily. His talent is that of a linguist, not that of a philologist. One forenoon in the Vatican, he spoke modern Greek to a young man who came in, Hebrew with a rabbi or ‘scrittore’ of the library, Russian with a magnate who passed through to the manuscript rooms, Latin and German with me, Danish with a young Danish archæologist who was present, English with the English,—Italian with many. German he speaks well, but almost too softly, like a Hamburgher; Latin he does not speak particularly well, and his English is just as middling. There is something about him that reminds me of a parrot—he does not seem to abound in ideas; but his talent is the more deserving of admiration, that the Italians have great difficulties to cope with in learning a foreign language. He will always remain a wonderful phenomenon, if not a miracle in the dogmatic sense. It is said to have been observed, that he often repeats the same ideas in conversation. He was entirely dependant on Mai in his position in the Vatican, especially at the commencement of his tenure of office, and manifested some weakness in this respect. He told me he had learned Russian at Bologna from a Pole, and so had been in danger of introducing Polonicisms into his Russian. In the French wars, his visits to the hospitals gave him an excellent opportunity of seeing and conversing with men of different nations, and the march of the Austrians made him acquainted with the dialect of the gipsies. Thrice, he told me, he has been dangerously ill, and in a kind of ‘confusion of languages.’ He is altogether a man of a sensitive nervous system, and much more decidedly and more pusillanimously attached to Catholicism than Mai. He has never travelled, except to Rome and Naples; and to Naples he went to study Chinese at the institute for the education of natives of China as missionaries, and there he fell dangerously ill. He seeks the society of foreigners very eagerly, in order to converse with every one in his own language. As a special favourite of the Pope, he enlivens his holiness’s after-dinner hours (Verdaungs-stunden), and is often invited to him in the afternoon: by his manifold acquirements and the winning urbanity of his manners, he seems as if born for the society of a court. He has made himself popular among the learned foreigners who visit the Vatican, by permitting them to continue their labours in the library during certain days after the beginning of the holidays, on which the library had ordinarily been closed with a view to the adjustment and supervision of the MSS. His predilection