ned on the Capitol, if not
made Roman senators, _pour l'amour du Grec_, as the _savant_ says in
the _Precieuses Ridicules_, if we had gone to the Eternal City!

But the fact was, that the _soi-disant_ 'ologists kicked up their
heels a little too audaciously at Venice under Austria's nose; and the
Government thought it high time to put an end to "science."

For instance, Prince Canino made his appearance in the uniform of the
Roman National Guard! This was a little too much; and the Prince, all
prince and Buonaparte as he was, was marched off to the frontier.
Canino had every right to be there as a man of science; for his
acquirements in many branches of science were large and real; and
specially as an entomologist he was known to be probably the first
in Italy. But he was the man, who, when selling his principality of
Canino, insisted on the insertion in the legal instrument of a claim
to an additional five pauls (value about two shillings), for the title
of prince which was attached to the possessor of the estates he was
selling. He was an out-and-out avowed Republican, and was the blackest
of black sheep to all the constituted governments of the peninsula.
He looked as little as he felt and thought like a prince. He was a
paunchy, oily-looking black haired man, whose somewhat heavy face
was illumined by a brilliant black eye full of humour and a mouth
expressive of good nature and _bonhomie_. His appearance in the
proscribed uniform might have been considered by Austria, if her
police authorities could have appreciated the fun of the thing, as
wholesomely calculated to throw ridicule on the hated institution. He
was utterly unassuming, and good-natured in his manner, and when seen
in his ordinary black habiliments looked more like a well-to-do Jewish
trader than anything else.

As for the social aspects of these Scientific Congresses, they were
becoming every year more festive, and, at all events to the ignoramus
outsiders who joined them, more pleasant. My good cousin and old
friend, then Colonel, now General, Sir Charles Trollope, was at Venice
that autumn. I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make
you a member." "Me! a member of a Scientific Congress!" said he. "God
bless you! I am as ignorant as a babe of all possible 'epteras and
'opteras, and 'statics and 'matics!" "Oh! nonsense! we are all men
of science here! Come along!"--_i.e._, to the ducal palace to be
inscribed. "But what do you mean to t