[397] Correspondance Astronomique, vol. iv. pp. 191-2.
[398] Correspondance Astronomique, vol. v. p. 160.
[399] Correspondance Astronomique, v. 163.
[400] Vol. I. pp. 481-2, London, 1844.
[401] In accounting for the appearance of such a narrative in a Journal with a purely scientific title, Admiral Smyth observes, that “it was one of Von Zach’s axioms that all true friends of science should try to keep it afloat in society, as fishermen do their nets, by attaching pieces of cork to the seine; and therefore he embodied a good deal of anecdote in his monthly journal of astronomical correspondence, a most delightful and useful periodical.”
[402] Mezzofanti and his friend presented to the Admiral the first volume of the “Ephemerides,” which contained the coefficients for the principal stars to be observed during five years—there were still at that time three years to run;—and expressed a hope that England would contribute funds towards the cost of the printing. On returning to England, the admiral gave this copy to the Rev. Dr. William Pearson, then engaged in the publication of his elaborate work on Practical Astronomy. Dr. Pearson, (at p. 495 of the first volume,) describing a table of 520 zodiacal stars, thus acknowledges his obligations to that work. “The same page also contains the N.E. angle that the star’s meridian makes with the ecliptic, and the annual variation of that angle; the principal columns of which have been taken from the Bononiæ Ephemerides for 1817-1822, computed by Pietro Caturegli, which computations have greatly facilitated our labours.”
[403] Borrow’s Gipsies in Spain, p. 240. Ample specimens and descriptions of it are given by Adelung, vol. I. pp. 244-52. It may, perhaps, be necessary to add that neither of these dialects, nor indeed of any of the dialects used by European gipsies, bears the least resemblance (although often confounded with it) to the “thieves’ slang,” which is used by robbers and other mauvais sujets in various countries,—the “Rothwälsch” (Red Italian) of Germany, the “Argot” of France, the “Germania” of Spain, and the “Gergo” of Italy. All these, like the English “slang,” consist chiefly of words borrowed from the languages of the several countries in which they prevail, applied in a hidden sense known only to the initiated. On the contrary the gipsy idiom is almost a language properly so called. See a singular chapter in Borrow’s Gipsies in Spain, 242-57. For a copious vocabulary of the “Argot” of the French thieves, see M. Nisard’s most curious and amusing Litterature du Colportage, II. 383-403.
[404] Blume’s Iter Italicum, II. p. 152.
[405] In 1823. See an interesting biography in the Memorie di Modena.
[406] Manavit, p. 51.