Mr. Grattan was deeply affected by this remarkable interview; and I may add that I have known few Protestant visitors of the Cardinal, who did not carry away the most favourable impressions regarding him. With all the earnestness and fervour of his own religious convictions, he was singularly tolerant and forbearing towards the followers of another creed. “His gentleness and modesty,” writes Chevalier (now Baron) Bunsen, “have often struck me. Once, some misrepresentations of Lady Morgan in her book on Italy, being mentioned in his presence with strong vituperation, he gently interposed. ‘Poor Lady Morgan!’ said he; ‘it is not yet given to her to see truth.’” But although in my conversations with the Cardinal in 1841, his Eminence confined himself entirely to English, yet on one occasion, at the close of a meeting of the Accademia della Cattolica Religione, I heard him converse, with every appearance of fluency and ease, in six different languages with the various members of a group who collected around him; in Romaic with Monsignor Missir, a Greek Archbishop; in German with Guido Görres; in Magyar with a Hungarian artist who accompanied him; in French with the Abbé La Croix, of the French church of St. Lewis; in Spanish with a young Spanish Dominican; and in English with myself and my companions. It was only however, during a second and more prolonged visit to Rome in the first six months of 1843, that I was witness, in its full reality, of the marvellous gift of which I had read and heard so much. I was fortunate enough to arrive on Rome in the vigil of the great annual “Academy” of the Propaganda, which, from immemorial time has been held during the octave of the Epiphany, the special festival of that institution. It is hardly necessary, in speaking of an exercise now so celebrated, to explain that this Academy consists of a series of brief addresses and recitations, generally speaking in a metrical form, delivered by the students in all the various languages which happen at the time to be represented in the college. The subjects of these compositions are commonly drawn from the festival itself, or from some kindred theme; and the rapidity with which they succeed each other, and the earnestness and vigour with which most of them are delivered, create an impression which hardly any other conceivable exhibition could produce. To the audience, of course, the greater number of these recitations are an unknown sound; but the earnest manner of the speakers; their foreign and unwonted intonations; the curious variety of feature and expression which they present; and the unique character of the whole proceeding—gave to the scene an interest entirely independent of the recitations themselves considered as literary compositions.