flowers bring no dark stories to one's mind. But yonder's
the laird: dinner will be ready by this time.

* * * * *

And John was right; for it was ready, with a jovial party to despatch
it. But I never saw my old friend after. He emigrated to Canada with
his managing master in the following spring; and, having at least kept
the real names with enjoined secrecy, it seems at this distance of
time no breach of trust to repeat the toll-keeper's story.

CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI.

Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least
attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated
Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition,
simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he
never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors;
and marvellous as were the tales in circulation concerning him, the
opportunity of witnessing more closely the exercise of his almost
preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with
which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of
his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for
the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had
laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern
times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the
celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most
extraordinary personages recorded in history.

Giuseppe (Joseph) Mezzofanti was born at Bologna in 1774, of an
extremely humble family. His father was a poor carpenter; and the
eminence to which, by his own unassisted exertions, Mezzofanti,
without once leaving his native city, attained in the exercise of the
faculty of language--which is ordinarily cultivated only by the
arduous and expensive process of visiting and travelling in the
different countries in which each separate language is spoken--is not
the least remarkable of the many examples of successful 'pursuit of
knowledge under difficulties,' which literary history supplies. He was
educated in one of the poor schools of his native city, which was
under the care of the fathers of the celebrated Congregation of the
Oratory; and the evidence of more than ordinary talent which he
exhibited, early attracted the notice of one of the members of the
order, to whose kind instruction and patronage Mezzofanti was indebted
for alm