By far the most remarkable, however, of Mezzofanti’s successes in the Propaganda was his acquisition of Chinese. The difficulty of that language for Europeans has long been proverbial,[495] and it argued no ordinary courage in a scholar now on the verge of his sixtieth year to enter regularly upon such a study. His first progress at Naples, before he was interrupted by the severe illness which there seized him, has been already described. It was not for a considerable time after his return, that he was enabled to resume the attempt systematically. A wish was expressed by the authorities of the Propaganda that a select number of the students of the Naples college should be sent to Rome for the completion of their theological studies. Three young Chinese had already visited the Propaganda while Mezzofanti was still in Bologna, one of whom, named Pacifico Yu, offered himself to the Cardinal Prefect, as a missionary to the Corea, at a period when the attempt was almost a certain road to martyrdom: but it was not until the year 1835-6 that the design of adopting a few of the Neapolitan students into the college of the Propaganda was actually carried out. Don Raffaelle Umpierres, for many years Procurator of the mission at Macao, was soon afterwards appointed their prefect and professor; and under his auspices and with the assistance of the young Chinese, Mezzofanti resumed the study with new energy. His success is admitted on all hands to have been almost unexampled. Certainly it has never been surpassed by any European not resident in China. In the year 1843, I was myself present while he conversed with two youths, named Leang and Mong, and although my evidence cannot extend beyond these external signs, I can at least bear witness to the fluency with which he spoke, and the ease and spirit with which he seemed to sustain the conversation. But his complete success is placed beyond all doubt by an attestation forwarded to me, by the abate Umpierres, the Chinese Professor,[496] already named, who declares that he “frequently conversed with the Cardinal in Chinese, from the year 1837, up to the date of his death, and that he not only spoke the mandarin Chinese,[497] but understood other dialects of the language.”