ed; 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 electro-magnetism; 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 had secured
the notice of his teachers one circumstance sufficiently proves. A
philosophical society was started under the presidency of Mamiani, "one
of the examiners and one of the leaders of the Moderate party"; and out
of five promising students brought forward by the professors to attend
the sittings and present essays, Signor Flaminio was one. I cannot find
that he ever read an essay; and indeed I think his hands were otherwise
too full. He found his fellow-students "not such a bad set of chaps,"
and preferred the Piedmontese before the Genoese; but I suspect he mixed
not very freely with either. Not only were his days filled with
University work, but his spare hours were fully dedicated to the arts
under the eye of a beloved task-mistress. He worked hard and well in the
art school, where he obtained a silver medal "for