With the return of quiet, and the reopening of the universities, we
behold a new character, Signor Flaminio: the professors, it
appears, made no attempt upon the Jenkin; and thus readily
italianised the Fleeming. He came well recommended; for their
friend Ruffini was then, or soon after, raised to be the head of
the University; and the professors were very kind and attentive,
possibly to Ruffini's PROTEGE, perhaps also to the first Protestant
student. It was no joke for Signor Flaminio at first; certificates
had to be got from Paris and from Rector Williams; the classics
must be furbished up at home that he might follow Latin lectures;
examinations bristled in the path, the entrance examination with
Latin and English essay, and oral trials (much softened for the
foreigner) in Horace, Tacitus, and Cicero, and the first University
examination only three months later, in Italian eloquence, no less,
and other wider subjects. On one point the first Protestant
student was moved to thank his stars: that there was no Greek
required for the degree. Little did he think, as he set down his
gratitude, how much, in later life and among cribs and
dictionaries, he was to lament this circumstance; 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
electromagnetism; and it was principally in that subject that
Signor Flaminio, questioned in Latin and answering in Italian,
passed his Master of Arts degree with first-class honours. That he