54 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



cumstance ; nor how much of that later life he 

 was to spend acquiring, with infinite toil, a shadow 

 of what he might then have got with ease and 

 fully. But if his Genoese education was in this 

 particular imperfect, he was fortunate in the 

 branches that more immediately touched on his 

 career. The physical laboratory was the best 

 mounted in Italy. Bancalari, the professor of 

 natural philosophy, was famous in his day ; by 

 what seems even an odd coincidence, he went 

 deeply into electro-magnetism ; and it was prin- 

 cipally in that subject that Signer Flaminio, ques- 

 tioned in Latin and answering in Italian, passed his 

 Master of Arts degree with first-class honours. 

 That he had secured the notice of his teachers, one 

 circumstance sufficiently proves. A philosophical 

 society was started under the presidency of Mamiani, 

 ' one of the examiners and one of the leaders of the 

 Moderate party ' ; and out of five promising students 

 brought forward by the professors to attend the 

 sittings and present essays, Signer Flaminio was 

 one. I cannot find that he ever read an essay ; 

 and indeed I think his hands were otherwise too 

 full. He found his fellow-students ' not such a 

 bad set of chaps,' and preferred the Piedmontese 

 before the Genoese ; but I suspect he mixed not 

 very freely with either. Not only were his days 

 filled with university work, but his spare hours were 

 fully dedicated to the arts under the eye of a 



