Mr. Kip’s impressions as to the Cardinal’s want of skill in the science of language and of its philosophical bearing on history and ethnology, must be admitted to have more foundation, and are shared by several of the scholars who visited him, especially those who cultivated ethnology as a particular study. I have reserved for this place a short notice of the Cardinal, which has been communicated to me by Baron Bunsen, and which, while it does ample justice to Mezzofanti’s merits as a linguist, puts a very low estimate on his accomplishments as a philologer, and a critic. The reader will gather from much of what has been already said, that I am far from adopting this estimate in several of its particulars; but Baron Bunsen’s opinion upon any question of scholarship or criticism is too important to be overlooked. “I saw him first as Abate and Librarian at Bologna, in 1828, when travelling through Italy, with the Crown Prince (now King) of Prussia. When he came to Rome as head librarian to the Vatican, I have frequently had the pleasure of seeing him in my house, and in the Vatican. He was always amiable, humane, courteous, and spoke with equal fluency the different languages of Europe. His gentleness and modesty have often struck me. Once, when some misrepresentations of Lady Morgan in her book on Italy, were mentioned before him with very strong vituperation, ‘Poor Lady Morgan!’ he said, ‘it is not yet given to her to see truth.’ When complimented by an English lady upon his miraculous facility in acquiring languages, with the additional observation that Charles the Fifth had said, ‘as many languages as a man knows, so many times he is a man,’ he replied, ‘Well, that ought rather to humble us; for it is essential to man to err, and therefore, such a man is the more liable to error, if Charles the Fifth’s observation is true.’ On the other side, I must confess that I was always struck by the observation of an Italian who answered to the question: ‘Non è miracoloso di vedere un uomo parlare quaranta due lingue?’ replied, ‘Si, senza dubbio; ma più miracoloso ancora è di sentire che questo uomo in quaranta due lingue non dice _niente_.’ A giant as a linguist, Mezzofanti certainly was a child as a philologer and philological critic. He delighted in etymologies, and sometimes he mentioned new and striking ones, particularly as to the Romanic languages and their dialects. But he could not draw any philosophical or historical consequences from that circumstance, beyond the first self-evident elements. He had no idea of philosophical grammar. I have once seen his attempt at decyphering a Greek inscription, and never was there such a failure. Nor has he left or published anything worth notice.