502 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 



have been paid to this distinguislied man on personal grounds. 

 Charitable, kind-hearted, hospitable, ever ready to advance with his 

 counsel and his means the interests of literary men, and the broken 

 fortunes of all, the most hot-headed political partisan might have 

 hesitated to aim an affront at such a man. But had the personal 

 character of the Prussian envoy stood as low as that of the most ill- ' 

 conditioned diplomatist that ever lived, still, from his official position, 

 he was entitled to every outward mark of respect." 



My last historical European autograph is that of Cardinal Mezzo- 

 fanti, one of the lions of Rome down to 1849. His great distinction 

 was a facility in the acquisition of languages, to the minutest differ- 

 ences of dialect and shades of patois. At the college of the Pro- 

 paganda, where all living languages are currently spoken, by 

 missionaries or students from all parts of the world, Mezzofanti 

 could converse with each in his own tongue and idiom. If, it is said, 

 he was addressed for the first time in a language or a dialect new to 

 him, he listened with a wonderful power of attention, decomposed 

 the sounds in his mind, searched for the analogies, sought out the 

 roots. In a short time all was clear to him : he was master of the 

 lexicon and the grammar of the hitherto unknown tongue. My 

 autograph of Mezzofanti is one which was presented by him to the 

 distinguished English botanist, Dawson Turner. It reads thus, first 

 in English : "To the famous author of Historia Filicum." Then the 

 same words are repeated in G-erman : then follows a sentence clearly 

 written in Hebrew, without points, with a translation in English : 

 " Great are all the works of God ; and you, investigating the smallest 

 herbs and giving them a name, obtained a great name to yourself." 

 The whole is addressed to " Mr. Dawson Turner." Lord Dudley, in 

 a letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, 1841, thus speaks of Mezzofanti : 

 " I had a letter to Professor Mezzofanti, who is famous all over Italy 

 for his wondrous knowledafe of lanifuages. He is said to know 

 thirty-six in all, of which he can speak twenty-two. You may 

 suppose how much of this I was obliged to take upon trust. How-' 

 ever, he certainly speaks English in a way that quite surprised me ; 

 particularly in an Italian, and one that had never stirred out of 

 Italy. He is a man of pleasing, simple manners, but his conversation 

 does not give one any notion of his being possessed of any remark- 

 able talent. Indeed, a person of great ability would hardly have 

 sought distinction from so useless a pursuit. He must have an 

 immense memory, and that is probably all." 



