FROM the commencement of 1803, those difficulties of the Abate Mezzofanti's position, which merely arose from the straitness of his income, began gradually to diminish. On the 29th of January in that year he was appointed assistant librarian of the Istituto of Bologna ; one of those munificent literary institutions of which Italy is so justly proud, founded in the end of the seventeenth century by the celebrated General Count Marsigli, and enriched by the munificence of many successive scholars and citizens of Bologna ; especially of the great Bolognese Pope, Benedict XIV. Its collections and museums are among the finest in Italy ; and the library contains above a hundred and fifty thousand volumes.

But whatever of pecuniary advantage he derived from this appointment, was perhaps more than counterbalanced by the constant demand upon his time from the charge of so extensive a library : especially as he confesses that, up to that period, he had seldom bestowed a thought on the study of bibliography.