CHAPTER XVI.[1843-1849.]

In the midst of the honours and occupations of his new dignity, Cardinal Mezzofanti sustained a severe affliction in the death of his favourite nephew, Monsignor Minarelli—theGiuseppino(Joe) so often commemorated in his early correspondence. This amiable and learned ecclesiastic instead of accompanying his uncle to Rome, where the most brilliant prospects were open to him, preferred to pursue the quiet and useful career of university life, in which he had hitherto been associated with him in Bologna. By successive steps, he had risen to the Rectorate of the University; and in recognition of his services to that institution, the honorary dignity of a prelate of the first class in the Roman Court—popularly styleddel mantelletto—had been conferred on him by the Pope. The Cardinal, as is plain from his own letters and those of his Bologna friends, was warmly attached to him. While he lived in Bologna Giuseppe was his friend and companion, rather than his pupil; and the young man’s early death was feltthe more deeply by him, from the congeniality of tastes and studies which had always subsisted between them.

The Cardinal’s sister, Teresa, (mother of the deceased prelate,) although she was ten years his senior, was still living in their old home at Bologna, and he continued to correspond with her up to the time of his death. His letters to her are all exceedingly simple and unaffected—so entirely of a domestic character, and without public interest, that, if I translate one of them here—the latest which has come into my hands—it is merely as a specimen of the warmth and tenderness, as well as deeply religious character of the Cardinal’s affection for his sister and for her children.

“We are on the eve of your Saint’s Day, my dearest sister. I am to say Mass on that day in the Church of the Servites; but I shall offer it for you, praying with all the fervor of my heart that God may long preserve you in health, and console you under your affliction, and that your holy patroness may protect you, and obtain for you all the graces of which you stand in need. I wish to mark the occasion by a little token of my affection, and I have already written to Gesnalde to transmit it to you. It is a mere trifle, but I know that you will only look, as you have always done in past years, to the person it comes from, and that you will give it value by accepting it, and by corresponding with me in recommending me, as I do you, to the special favour of the Almighty. As being my elder sister, you used always, when we were children, to pray for your little brother; and I know that you still continue the practice; I am most grateful for it, and I try to make you every return.Your sons, and my niece Anna unite with me in their affectionate wishes, and beg your blessing. May God bestow his most abundant blessings on you!”

Your sons, and my niece Anna unite with me in their affectionate wishes, and beg your blessing. May God bestow his most abundant blessings on you!”

The history of the later years of the Cardinal’s lifepresents scarcely any incidents of any special interest. Few of the reports of the foreigners who met him at this period, differ in any material particulars from those which we have already seen. I shall content myself, therefore, with two or three of them, which may be taken as specimens of the entire, but which are selected also with a view to serve in guiding the reader in his estimate, not merely of the general attainments of the Cardinal as a linguist, but of his proficiency in the languages of the writers themselves, and in other languages, not specially commemorated hitherto.

We have already passingly alluded to the account of Mezzofanti given by the Rev. Ingraham Kip, a clergyman of the Episcopalian Church in America: but the details into which this gentleman enters, regarding his Eminence’s knowledge of the English language and literature, are so important, that it would be unpardonable to pass them by.

“He is a small lively looking man,” says Mr. Kip, “apparently over seventy. He speaks English with a slight foreign accent—yet remarkably correct. Indeed, I never before met with a foreigner who could talk for ten minutes without using some word with a shade of meaning not exactly right; yet, in thelong conversation I had with the Cardinal, I detected nothing like this. He did not use a single expression or word in any way which was not strictly and idiomatically correct.He converses, too, without the slightest hesitation, never being at the least loss for the proper phrase.In talking about him some time before to an ecclesiastic, I quoted Lady Blessington’s remark, ‘that she did not believe he had made much progress in the literature of these forty-two languages; but was rather like a man who spent his time in manufacturing keys to palaces which he had not time to enter;’ and I inquired whether this was true. ‘Try him,’ said he,laughing; and, having now the opportunity, I endeavoured to do so. I led him, therefore, to talk of Lord Byron and his works, and then of English literature generally. He gave me, in the course of his conversation, quite a discussion on the subject which was the golden period of the English language; and of course fixed on the days of Addison. He drew a comparison between the characteristics of the French, Italian, and Spanish languages; spoke of Lockhart’s translation from the Spanish, and incidentally referred to various other English writers. He then went on to speak of American literature, and paid high compliments to the pure style of some of our best writers. He expressed an opinion that, with many, it had been evidently formed by a careful study of the old authors—those ‘wells of English undefiled’—and, that within the last fifty years we had imported fewer foreign words than had been done in England. He spoke very warmly of the works of Mr. Fennimore Cooper, whose name, by the way, is better known on the continent than that of any other American author.”

In talking about him some time before to an ecclesiastic, I quoted Lady Blessington’s remark, ‘that she did not believe he had made much progress in the literature of these forty-two languages; but was rather like a man who spent his time in manufacturing keys to palaces which he had not time to enter;’ and I inquired whether this was true. ‘Try him,’ said he,laughing; and, having now the opportunity, I endeavoured to do so. I led him, therefore, to talk of Lord Byron and his works, and then of English literature generally. He gave me, in the course of his conversation, quite a discussion on the subject which was the golden period of the English language; and of course fixed on the days of Addison. He drew a comparison between the characteristics of the French, Italian, and Spanish languages; spoke of Lockhart’s translation from the Spanish, and incidentally referred to various other English writers. He then went on to speak of American literature, and paid high compliments to the pure style of some of our best writers. He expressed an opinion that, with many, it had been evidently formed by a careful study of the old authors—those ‘wells of English undefiled’—and, that within the last fifty years we had imported fewer foreign words than had been done in England. He spoke very warmly of the works of Mr. Fennimore Cooper, whose name, by the way, is better known on the continent than that of any other American author.”

As Mr. Kip, unfortunately, was not acquainted with any of the Indian languages of North America, he was unable to test the extent of the Cardinal’s attainments in these languages. His account, nevertheless, is not without interest.

“In referring to our Indian languages, he remarked, that the only one with which he was well acquainted was the Algonquin, although he knew something of the Chippewa and Delaware; and asked whether I understood Algonquin; I instantly disowned any knowledge of the literature of that respectable tribe of Savages; for I was afraid the next thing would be a proposal that we should continue the conversation in their mellifluous tongue. He learned it from an Algonquin missionary, who returned to Rome, and lived just long enough to enable the Cardinal to begin this study. He had read the works of Mr. Du Ponceau[533]of Philadelphia, on the subject of Indian languages, and spoke very highly of them.”

It is right to add Mr. Kip’s conclusions from the entire interview, and his impressions regarding the natural and acquired powers of the great linguist.

“And yet,” he concludes, “all this conversation by no means satisfied meof the depth of the Cardinal’s literary acquirements. There was nothing said which gave evidence of more than a superficial acquaintance with English literature; the kind of knowledge which passes current in society, and which is necessarily picked up by one who meets so often with cultivated people of each country. His acquirements in words are certainly wonderful; but I could not help asking myself their use. I have never yet heard of their being of any practical benefit to the world during the long life of their possessor. He has never displayed anything philosophical in his character of mind; none of that power of combination which enables Schlegel to excel in all questions of philology, and gives him a talent for discriminating and a power of handling the resources of a language which have never been surpassed.”[534]

Perhaps the reader will be disposed to regard Mr. Kip’s criticism as somewhatexigeantin its character; and to think that, even taking his own report of his conversation with the Cardinal, and of the number and variety of the English and American writers, with whom, and with whose peculiar characteristics, he was acquainted—some of them, moreover—as for example, Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads—a translationfrom a foreign language—most unlikely to attract a “superficial” foreigner, he was a little unreasonable in refusing “to be satisfied with the depth of the Cardinal’s literary acquirements.” For my part, I cannot help thinking this interview, even as recorded by Mr. Kip, one of the most astonishing incidents in the entire history of this extraordinary man. And I may add to what is here stated of his familiarity with the principal English authors, native and American, that, as I am informed by the Rev. Mr. Gray, of Glasgow, the Cardinal was also intimately acquainted with the national literature of Scotland; that he had read many of the works of Walter Scott and Burns; and that he understood and was able to enjoy the Lowland Scottish dialect, which is one of the great charms of both.

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 ofscholarship 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 diceniente.’ 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.I explain this by his ignorance of allrealities. He remembered words and their sounds and significations almost instinctively;but he lived upon reminiscences: he never had an original thought. I understood from one of his learned colleagues, (a Roman Prelate,) that it was the same with his theology; there was no acuteness in his divinity, although he knew well St. Thomas and other scholastics.As to Biblical Criticism, he had no idea of it. His knowledge of Greek criticism too was very shallow.In short, his linguistic talent was that of seizing sounds and accents, and the whole (so to say) idiom of a language, and reproducing them by a wonderful, but equally special, memory.I do not think he had ever his equal in this respect.But the cultivation of this power had absorbed all the rest.Let it, however, never be forgotten that he was, according to all I have heard from him, a charitable, kind Christian, devout but not intolerant, and that his habitual meekness was not a cloak, but a real Christian habit and virtue. Honour be to his memory.”

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 diceniente.’ 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.

I explain this by his ignorance of allrealities. He remembered words and their sounds and significations almost instinctively;but he lived upon reminiscences: he never had an original thought. I understood from one of his learned colleagues, (a Roman Prelate,) that it was the same with his theology; there was no acuteness in his divinity, although he knew well St. Thomas and other scholastics.

As to Biblical Criticism, he had no idea of it. His knowledge of Greek criticism too was very shallow.

In short, his linguistic talent was that of seizing sounds and accents, and the whole (so to say) idiom of a language, and reproducing them by a wonderful, but equally special, memory.

I do not think he had ever his equal in this respect.

But the cultivation of this power had absorbed all the rest.

Let it, however, never be forgotten that he was, according to all I have heard from him, a charitable, kind Christian, devout but not intolerant, and that his habitual meekness was not a cloak, but a real Christian habit and virtue. Honour be to his memory.”

There is a part of this criticism which is unquestionably just: but there are also several of the views from which I am bound to dissent most strongly, and to which I shall have occasion to revert hereafter. Meanwhile, that the Cardinal paid more attention to these inquiries than Mr. Kip and M. Bunsen suppose, will appear from the testimony of the Abbé Gaume, author of the interesting work, “Les Trois Rome.”

“I had often met the illustrious philologer,” says M. Gaume, “at the Propaganda, where he used to come to spend the afternoon. Kind, affable, modest, he mixed with the students, and spoke by turns Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Chinese, and twenty other languages, with a facility almost prodigious. When I entered, I found him studying Bas-Breton, and I have no doubt that in a short time he will be able to exhibit it to the inhabitants of Vannes themselves. His eminence assured me of two points. The first is the fundamental unity of all languages. This unity is observable especially in the parts of speech, which are the same or nearly so in all languages. The second is the trinity of dialectsin the primitive language;—a trinity corresponding with the three races of mankind. The Cardinal has satisfied himself that there are but three races sprung from one common stock, as there are but three languages or principal dialects of one primitive language;—the Japhetic language and race; the Semitic language and race; and the Chamitic language and race. Thus the unity of the human kind and the trinity of races, which are established by all the monuments of history, are found also to be supported by the authority of the most extraordinary philologer that has even been known.The Cardinal’s testimony is the more important inasmuch as his linguistic acquirements are not confined to a superficial knowledge. Of the many languages which he possesses, there is not one in which he is not familiar with the every day words, common sayings, adages, and all that difficult nomenclature which constitutes the popular part of a language. One day he asked one of our friends to what province of France he belonged. ‘To Burgundy;’ replied my friend. ‘Oh!’ said Mezzofanti, ‘you have two Burgundian dialects; which of them do you speak?’ ‘I know,’ replied our friend, ‘the patois of Lower Burgundy.’ Whereupon the Cardinal began to talk to him in Lower Burgundian, with a fluency which the vine-dressers of Nantes or Beaune might envy.”[535]

The Cardinal’s testimony is the more important inasmuch as his linguistic acquirements are not confined to a superficial knowledge. Of the many languages which he possesses, there is not one in which he is not familiar with the every day words, common sayings, adages, and all that difficult nomenclature which constitutes the popular part of a language. One day he asked one of our friends to what province of France he belonged. ‘To Burgundy;’ replied my friend. ‘Oh!’ said Mezzofanti, ‘you have two Burgundian dialects; which of them do you speak?’ ‘I know,’ replied our friend, ‘the patois of Lower Burgundy.’ Whereupon the Cardinal began to talk to him in Lower Burgundian, with a fluency which the vine-dressers of Nantes or Beaune might envy.”[535]

This curious familiarity with provincialpatois, described by the Abbé Gaume, extended to the other provincial dialects of France. M. Manavit found him not only acquainted with the Tolosan dialect, but even not unread in its local literature. His library contains books in the dialects of Lorraine, Bearne, Franche Comté, and Dauphiné. I have already mentioned his speaking Provençal with Madame de Chaussegros; and Dr. Grant, bishop of Southwark, told me that he was able, solely by theaccent of the Abbé Carbry, to determine the precise place of his nativity, Montauban.

Another language regarding which, although it has more than once been alluded to, few testimonies have as yet been brought forward, is Spanish. I shall content myself, nevertheless, with the evidence of a single Spaniard, which, brief as it is, leaves nothing to be desired. “I can assert of his Eminence,” writes Father Diego Burrueco, a Trinitarian of Zamora, who knew the Cardinal during many of these years, “that he spoke our Spanish like a native of Castile. He could converse in the Andalusian dialect with Andalusians; he was able, also, to distinguish the Catalonian dialect from that of Valencia, and both from that of the Island of Majorca.”[536]We have already seen that, at a very early period of his life, he studied the Mexican, Peruvian, and other languages of Spanish America. That he spoke both Mexican and Peruvian after he came to Rome, Cardinal Wiseman has no doubt. He is also stated to have learned something of the languages of Oceanica from Bishop Pompalier, of New Zealand. I may add here, though I have failed in finding native witnesses, that it is the universal belief in Rome that he spoke well both ancient and modern Chaldee, and ancient Coptic, as also the modern dialect of Egypt. He had the repute also of being thoroughly familiar with both branches of the Illyrian family—the Slavonic and the Romanic. To the testimonies already borne to his skill in Armenian and Turkish, I must add that of the Mechitarist, Father Raphael Trenz, Superior of the Armenian College in Paris, whoknew him in 1846. “Having conversed with his Eminence,” writes this father,[537]“in ancient and in modern Armenian, and also in Turkish, I am able to attest that he spoke and pronounced them all with the purity and propriety of a native of these countries.”

Perhaps also, although we have had many notices of his skill in Russian and Polish from a very early period, it may be satisfactory to subjoin the reports of one or two travellers who conversed with him in these languages during his latter years.

To begin with Russian. A traveller of that nation who twice visited him about this time, cited by Mr. Watts, describes him as “a phenomenon as yet unparalleled in the literary world, and one that will scarce be repeated, unless the gift of tongues be given anew, as at the dawn of Christianity.”

“Cardinal Mezzofanti,” he writes, “spoke eight languages fluently in my presence: he expressed himself in Russian very purely and correctly; but, as he is more accustomed to the style of books than that of ordinary discourse, it is necessary to use the language of books in talking with him for the conversation to flow freely. His passion for acquiring languages is so great, that even now, in advanced age, he continues to study fresh dialects. He learned Chinese not long ago; and is constantly visiting the Propaganda for practice in conversation with its pupils of all sorts of races. 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 ofGodwritten in his own hand, in fifty-six languages, of which thirty were European, not counting their subdivision of dialects, seventeen Asiatic, also without reckoning dialects, five African, and four American. In his person, the confusion that arose at the building of Babel is annihilated, and allnations, according to the sublime expression of Scriptures, are again of one tongue. Will posterity ever see anything similar? Mezzofanti is one of the most wonderful curiosities of Rome.”[538]

In the end of the year 1845, Nicholas, the late Emperor of Russia, (who of course is an authority also on the Polish language,) came to Rome, on his return from Naples, where he had been visiting his invalid Empress. The history of his interview with the Pope, Gregory XVI., and of the apostolic courage and candour with which, in two successive conferences, that great pontiff laid before him the cruelty, injustice, and impolicy of his treatment of the Catholic subjects of his empire, is too well known to need repetition here.[539]It was commonly said at the time, and has been repeated in more than one publication, that the Pope’s interpreter in this memorable conference was Cardinal Mezzofanti. This is a mistake. The only Cardinal present at the interview was the mild and retiring, but truly noble-minded and apostolic, Cardinal Acton.

A few days, however, after this interview, M. Boutanieff, the Russian minister at Rome, wrote to request that Cardinal Mezzofanti would wait upon the Emperor; and a still more direct invitation was conveyed to him, in the name of the Emperor himself, by his first aide-de-camp. The Cardinal of course could not hesitate to comply. Their conversation was held both in Russian and in Polish. TheEmperor was filled with wonder, and confessed that, in either of these languages it would be difficult to discover any trace of foreign peculiarity in the Cardinal’s accent or manner.[540]It is somewhat amusing to add, that the Cardinal is said to have taken some exceptions to the purity, or at least the elegance, of the Emperor’s Polish conversational style.

As regards the Polish language, however, the year 1845 supplies other and more direct testimonies than that of the Emperor Nicholas.

In an extract cited by Mr. Watts from the Posthumous Works of the eminent Polish authoress, Klementyna z Tanskich Hoffmanowa, who visited Rome in the March of that year, it is stated that “the cardinal spoke Polish well, though with somewhat strained and far-fetched expressions;” and that he was master of the great difficulty of Polish pronunciation—that of the markedl—“although he often forgot it.” This lady has preserved in her Diary a Polish couplet, written for her by the Cardinal with his own hand, under a little picture of the Madonna.

Ten ogien ktory żyia w sercu twoiemO Matko Boża! zapal w sercu moiem.[541]

Ten ogien ktory żyia w sercu twoiem

O Matko Boża! zapal w sercu moiem.[541]

Another, and to the Cardinal far more interesting, representative of the Polish language appeared in Rome during the same year. Mezzofanti had long felt deeply the wrongs of his oppressed fellow-Catholicsin Poland and Lithuania. A few months before the Emperor’s arrival in Rome, they had been brought most painfully under his eyes by the visit of a refugee of that vast empire, and a victim of the atrocious policy which had become its ruling spirit—the heroic Makrena Mirazylawski, abbess of the Basilian convent of Minsk, the capital of the province of that name. The organized measures of coercion by which the Emperor endeavoured to compel the Catholic population of Lithuania and Poland, and the other Catholic subjects of the empire, into renunciation of their allegiance to the Holy See, and conformity with the doctrine and discipline of the Russian church, comprised all the members of the Catholic church in Russia without exception, even the nuns of the various communities throughout their provinces. Among these was a sisterhood of the Basilian order in the city of Minsk, thirty-five in number. The bishop of the diocese and the chaplain of the convent, having themselves conformed to the imperial will, first endeavoured to bend the resolution of these sisters by blandishment, but in the end sought by open violence to compel them into submission. But the nobleminded sisters, with their abbess at their head, firmly refused to yield; and, in the year 1839, the entire community (with the exception of one who died from grief and terror) were driven from their convent, and marched in chains to Witepsk, and afterwards to Polosk, where, with two other communities equally firm in their attachment to their creed, they were subjected, for nearly six years, to a series of cruelties and indignitiesof which it is difficult to think without horror, and which would revolt all credibility, were they not attested by authorities far from partial to the monastic institute.[542]Chained hand and foot; flogged; beaten with the fist and with clubs; thrown to the earth and trampled under foot; compelled to break stones and to labour at quarries and earthworks; dragged in sacks after a boat through a lake in the depth of winter; supplied only with the most loathsome food and in most insufficient quantity; lodged in cells creeping with maggots and with vermin; fed for a time exclusively on salt herrings, without a drop of water; tried, in a word, by every conceivable device of cruelty;—the perseverance of these heroic women is a living miracle of martyr-like fidelity. Nine of the number died from the effects of the excessive and repeated floggings to which, week after week, they were subjected, three fell dead in the course of their cruel tasks; two were trampled to death by their drunken guards; three were drowned in these brutalnoyades; nine were killed by the falling of a wall, and five were crushed in an excavation, while engaged in the works already referred to; eight became blind; two lost their reason; several others were maimed and crippled in various ways; so that, in the year 1845, out of the three united communities (which at the first had numbered fifty-eight) only four, of whom Makrena was the chief,retained the use of their limbs! These heroines of faith and endurance contrived at last to effect their escape from Polosk, from which place it had been resolved to transport them to Siberia; and, through a thousand difficulties and dangers, Makrena Mirazylawski made her adventurous way to Rome.

The sufferings and the wrongs of this interesting stranger found a ready sympathy in Cardinal Mezzofanti’s generous heart. He listened to her narrative with deep indignation, and took the liveliest interest in all the arrangements for her safe and fitting reception and that of her companions.

I was naturally anxious to hear what, on the other hand, were the abbess’s impressions of the cardinal. In reply to the inquiries of my friend, Rev. Dr. Morris, she “spoke of him in the very highest terms.” “He was,” she said, “a living saint,” and she described both his charity and his spirituality as very remarkable. When Father Ryllo (the Jesuit Rector of the Propaganda before F. Bresciani) left Rome for the African Mission, Cardinal Mezzofanti became Mother Makrena’s director, and continued to be so for two years. “He spoke Polish,” she declares, “like a native of Poland, and wrote it with great correctness.” Having ascertained that the abbess had had a considerable packet of papers written by him in Polish, generally on those occasions when he could not come to her as usual, on various spiritual subjects, I was most anxious to obtain copies of them; but I was deeply mortified to learn that they were all unfortunatelylost in the Revolution, when she was driven out of her little convent near Santa Maria Maggiore. This humble community was afterwards increased by the arrival of other fugitives from different parts of the Russian Empire; nor did the cardinal cease till the very last days of his life his anxious care of all their spiritual and temporal interests.

Another religious institution to which he devoted a good deal of his time was the House of Catechumens, of which, as has already been stated, he was Cardinal Protector. When M. Manavit was in Rome the inmates of this establishment, then in preparation for baptism, were between thirty and forty, several of whom were Moors or natives of Algeria; and there are few who will not cordially agree with him[543]in looking upon “the modest Cardinal, catechism in hand, in the midst of this humble flock, as a nobler picture, more truly worthy of admiration, than delivering his most learned dissertation on the Vedas to the most brilliant company that ever assembled in the halls of the Propaganda.”

In this, and in more than one other charitable institution of Rome, the Cardinal took especial delight in assisting at the First Communion of the young inmates; and, from the simple fervour of his manner and the genuine truthfulness of his piety, he was most happy and effective in the little half hortatory, half ejaculatory discourses, calledFervorini, which in Rome ordinarily, on occasions of a First Communion, precede the actual administration of the sacrament.

M. Manavit adds that, even after Mezzofanti became cardinal, his old character ofConfessario dei Forestieri(“Foreigners’ Confessor”) was by no means a sinecure. To many of the Polish exiles, clergy and laity, who visited or settled in Rome, he acted as director, especially after Father Ryllo’s departure to Africa. He was equally accessible to low and high degree. M. Mouravieff[544](the Russian traveller already cited) mentions an instance in which, having heard of a poor servant maid, a young Russian girl, who desired to be received into the Church, he paid her repeated visits, instructed her in the catechism, and himself completed in person every part of her preparation for the sacraments.

The death of Pope Gregory XVI., (June 1st, 1846) which, although in a ripe old age, was at the time entirely unexpected, was a great affliction to Mezzofanti, whose affectionate relations with him were maintained to the very last. The Cardinal was, of course, a member of the conclave in which (June 16th) Pius IX. was elected. The speedy and unanimous agreement of the Cardinals in this election—one of the few which seemed to convert the traditional form of “election by inspiration,” into a reality—was commemorated impromptu by him in the following graceful epigram:—

Gregorius cœlo invectus sic protinus orat:“Heu cito Pastorem da, bone Christe, gregi!”Audit; et immissus pervadit pectora Patrum,Spiritus: et Nonus prodiitecce Pius![545]

Gregorius cœlo invectus sic protinus orat:

“Heu cito Pastorem da, bone Christe, gregi!”

Audit; et immissus pervadit pectora Patrum,

Spiritus: et Nonus prodiitecce Pius![545]

During the pontificate of Gregory XVI., Cardinal Mezzofanti never held any office of state; nor did the change of sovereign make any change in his rank or his occupations. He was, of course, continued by the new government in all his appointments; and the new Pope, Pius IX., regarded him with the same friendship and favour which he had enjoyed at the hands of his predecessor. In the social and political changes which ensued, Mezzofanti, from his non-political character, had no part. No one sympathized more cordially with the beneficent intentions of his Sovereign; but, completely shut out as he was by his position from political affairs, he pursued his quiet career, with all its wonted regularity, through the very hottest excitement of the eventful years of 1847 and 1848.

Many visitors who conversed with him in these, the last years of his life, have repeated to me the accounts which have already become familiar from the reports of those who knew him in earlier years. The fulfilment of his public duties as Cardinal;—the care of the institutions over which an especial charge had been assigned him;—the confessional, whenever his services were sought by a foreigner;—above all, his beloved pupils in the Propaganda—these formed for him the business of life.

“Almost every evening, when I was in the College of the Propaganda,” says F. Bresciani, “he would come to exercise himself with these dear pupils, who are collected there from all nations of the world, to be educated in sacred and profane literature and in the apostolic spirit. Then, as he conversed with me in the halls of the Propaganda when the pupils were returning from their evening walks, he would go to meet them as he saw them coming up the steps, and, as they passed him, would say something to them in their own languages; speaking to one, Chinese; to another, Armenian; to a third, Greek; to a fourth, Bulgarian. This one he would accost in Arabic, that, in Ethiopic, Geez, or Abyssinian; now he would speak in Russian, then in Albanian, in Persian, in Peguan, in Coptic, in English, in Lithuanian, in German, in Danish, in Georgian, in Kurdish, in Norwegian, in Swedish. Nor was there ever any risk that he should get entangled, or that a word of another language or a wrong pronunciation should escape him.”[546]...“Every year, from the time of his coming to Rome, even after he had been made Cardinal, he used to assist the students in composing their several national odes for the Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda, which is held during the octave of the Epiphany, and in which the astonished foreigners who witness it behold a living emblem of the unity of the Catholic Church, which alone is able, through the Holy Spirit that vivifieth her, to show forth in one fraternity the union of all tongues, in praising and blessing the Lord who created us and redeemed us by the blood of Jesus Christ. Now the Cardinal, in these fifty tongues and upwards, in which the pupils composed, would make all the necessary corrections whether of thought, metre, or phrase, with all, and perhaps more than all, the facility and exactness of others in writing poetry in their native tongue. After he had corrected the compositions, he would take his beloved pupils, one by one, and instruct them in the proper mode of reciting and pronouncing each. And, as some of them occasionally had entered collegewhen very little boys, and had forgotten some of the tones or cadence of their native languages, he would come to their aid by suggesting these, testing and correcting them with the utmost gentleness and patience.”[547]

“Every year, from the time of his coming to Rome, even after he had been made Cardinal, he used to assist the students in composing their several national odes for the Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda, which is held during the octave of the Epiphany, and in which the astonished foreigners who witness it behold a living emblem of the unity of the Catholic Church, which alone is able, through the Holy Spirit that vivifieth her, to show forth in one fraternity the union of all tongues, in praising and blessing the Lord who created us and redeemed us by the blood of Jesus Christ. Now the Cardinal, in these fifty tongues and upwards, in which the pupils composed, would make all the necessary corrections whether of thought, metre, or phrase, with all, and perhaps more than all, the facility and exactness of others in writing poetry in their native tongue. After he had corrected the compositions, he would take his beloved pupils, one by one, and instruct them in the proper mode of reciting and pronouncing each. And, as some of them occasionally had entered collegewhen very little boys, and had forgotten some of the tones or cadence of their native languages, he would come to their aid by suggesting these, testing and correcting them with the utmost gentleness and patience.”[547]

It would be out of place here to enter into any detail of the startling and violent changes by which these tranquil occupations were rudely interrupted. The Cardinal had watched with deep anxiety the gradually increasing demands with which each successive generous and confiding measure of the administration of Pius IX. had been met; but even his sagacious mind, schooled as it had already been in the vicissitudes of former revolutions, was not prepared for the succession of terrible events which crowded themselves into the last few weeks of the “year of revolution”—the furious demands of the clubs—the expulsion of the Jesuits—the assassination of De Rossi—the obtrusion of a republican ministry—the flight of the Pope—the proclamation of the Republic. Amid all the terrors of the time, he had but one thought—gratitude for the safety of the Pope. He was urged by his friends to imitate the example of the main body of the Cardinals, and to follow his Sovereign to Gaeta or Naples; but he refused to leave Rome, and continued through all the scenes of violence which followed the flight of Pius IX., to live, without any attempt at concealment, at his old quarters in the Palazzo Valentiniani.

Nevertheless, although, personally, Cardinal Mezzofanti suffered no molestation, the alarm and anxiety inseparable from such a time, could not fail to tell upon a constitution, at no time robust, and of late yearsmuch enfeebled. From the beginning of the year 1849, his strength began sensibly to diminish. It was characteristic of the man that even all the terrors of the period could not make him forget his favourite festival of the Epiphany; and that, among the numberless more deplorable changes which surrounded him, he still had a regret for the absence of the accustomed Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda. Before the middle of January he became so weak, that it was with the utmost difficulty he was able to say mass in his private chapel. While he was in this state of extreme debility, he was seized with an alarming attack of pleurisy; and although the acute symptoms were so far relieved at the end of January, that his family entertained sanguine hopes of his recovery, this illness was followed, in the early part of February, by an attack of gastric fever, by which the slender remains of his strength were speedily exhausted.

The venerable sufferer at once became sensible of his condition. From the very first intimation of his danger, he had commenced his preparation for death, with all the calm and simple piety which had characterised his life. In accordance with one of our beautiful Catholic customs—at once most holy in themselves, and an admirable help even to the sublimest piety—he at once entered upon aNovena, or nine days’ devotion, to St. Joseph; who, as, according to an old tradition, his own eyes were closed in death by the blessed hands of his divine Saviour, has been adopted by Catholic usage as the Patron of the Dying, and who was besides the name-saint and especialPatron of the Cardinal himself. In these pious exercises he was accompanied by his chaplain, by his nephews, Gaetano and Pietro, and above all, by his niece, Anna, who was most tenderly attached to him, and was inconsolable at the prospect of his death. He himself fixed the time for receiving the Holy Viaticum and the Extreme Unction. They were administered by Padre Ligi, parish priest of the Church of SS. Apostoli, assisted by the Cardinal’s chaplain, and by his confessor, Padre Proja, now Sacristan of St. Peter’s. The chaplain and the members of his family frequently assembled at his bed-side, to accompany and assist him in his dying devotions; and the intervals between these common prayers, in which all alike took part, were filled up with pious readings by Anna Minarelli, and with short prayers of the holy Cardinal himself. “Dio mio! abbiate pietà di me!” “My God, have mercy on me!”—was his ever recurring ejaculation, mingled occasionally with prayers for the exiled Pontiff, for the welfare of his widowed Church, and for the peace of his distracted country. “Abbiate pietà della Chiesa! Preghiamo per lei!”

By degrees he became too feeble to maintain his attention through a long prayer; but even still, with that deeply reverent spirit which had always distinguished him, he would not suffer the prayer to be abruptly terminated. “Terminiamo con un Gloria Patri,” “Let us finish with a Gloria Patri:”—he would say, when he found himself unable longer to attend to the Litany of the Dying, or the Rosary of the BlessedVirgin. But in a short time he would again summon them to resume their devotion.

Early in March it became evident that his end was fast approaching. He still retained strength by energy enough to commence a second Novena to his holy Patron St. Joseph—a pious exercise, which, in the simple words of his biographer, “he was destined to bring to an end in heaven.” During the last three days of life, his articulation, at times, was barely distinguishable; but even when his words were inaudible, his attendants could not mistake the unvarying fervour of his look, and the reverent movements of the lips and eyes, which betokened his unceasing prayer. From the morning of the 15th of March, the decline of strength became visibly more rapid; and, on the night of that day, he calmly expired.[548]His last distinguishable words, a happy augury of his blessed end—were: “Andiamo, andiamo, presto in Paradiso.” “I am going—I am going—soon to Paradise!”

The absence of the Roman Court, as well as the other unhappy circumstances of the times, precluded the possibility of performing his obsequies with the accustomed ceremonial. An offer of the honours of a public funeral, with deputations from the university, and an escort of the National Guard, was made by M. Gherardi, the Minister of Public Instruction in the new-born Republic. But these, and all other honours of the anti-Papal Republic, were declined by his family;—not only from the unseemliness of sucha ceremonial at such a time, but still more as inconsistent with the loyalty, and the personal feelings, principles, and character, of the illustrious deceased.

Without a trace, therefore, of the wonted solemnities of a cardinalitial funeral—thecappella ardente; the lofty catafalque; the solemn lying in state; the grandMissa de Requiem;—the remains of the great linguist were, on the evening of the 17th of March, conducted unostentatiously, with no escort but that of his own family and of the members of his modest household, bearing torches in their hands, to their last resting-place in Sant’ Onofrio, on the Janiculum—the church of his Cardinalitial title.

There, within the same walls which, as we saw, enclose the ashes of Torquato Tasso, the tomb of Cardinal Mezzofanti may be recognised by the following unpretending inscription, from the pen of his friend Mgr. Laureani:—

HEIC. IN. SEDE. HONORIS. SUI.SITUS. EST.JOSEPHUS. MEZZOFANTI. S. R. E. CARD.INNOCENTIA. MORUM. ET. PIETATE. MEMORANDUS.ITEMQUE. OMNIUM. DOCTRINARUM.AC. VETERUM. NOVORUMQUE. IDIOMATUM.SCIENTIA.PLANE. SINGULARIS. ET. FAMA. CULTIORI. ORBI.NOTISSIMUS.BONONIAE. NATUS. ANNO. MDCCLXXIV.ROMAE. DECESSIT. AN. MDCCCXLVIIII.

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