elevation, he only used the opportunities thus afforded for the
purpose of cultivating it with more effect. When the writer of these
pages first had the honour of being presented to him, he was in the
full flush of the excitement of a new study--that of the language of
the California Indians, two of whom had recently come as pupils to the
College of the Propaganda; and up to his very last year, the same zeal
continued unabated. His death occurred March 16, 1849, in the
seventy-fifth year of his age, and was most probably hastened by the
excitement and distress caused by the political troubles of the
period.

Such is a brief outline of the quiet and uneventful career of this
extraordinary man. It remains that we give a short account of the
nature and extent of his prodigious attainments as a linguist. It is
observed by the author of an interesting paper read a few weeks since
at a meeting of the Philological Society, that, taking the account of
the linguistic accomplishments of King Mithridates even in the most
exaggerated form in which it is given by the ancients, who represent
him as speaking the languages of twenty-two nations, it fades into
insignificance in contrast with the known and ascertained attainments
of Mezzofanti. A Russian traveller, who published in 1846 a collection
of _Letters from Rome_, writes of Mezzofanti:--'Twice I have visited
this remarkable man, a phenomenon as yet unparalleled in the learned
world. He spoke eight languages fluently in my presence. He expressed
himself in Russian very purely and correctly. Even now, in advanced
life, he continues to study fresh dialects. He learned Chinese not
long ago. I asked him to give me a list of all the languages and
dialects in which he was able to express himself, and he sent me the
name of GOD written with his own hand in _fifty-six_ languages, of
which thirty were European, not including their dialects; seventeen