The official revenue assigned from the Civil List for a cardinal resident in Rome, is four thousand Roman crowns (between eight and nine hundred pounds sterling) ; by far the greater part of which is absorbed in the necessary expenses of his household, the payment of his chaplain, secretary, and servants, the maintenance of his state equipage, &c. ; so that for those cardinals who, like Mezzofanti, possess no private fortune, the remnant available for purely personal expenditure is very trifling indeed. With Mezzofanti's frugal and simple habits, however, it not only proved amply sufficient to supply all his own modest wants, but also enabled him to enlarge and extend the unostentatious charities which, throughout his entire life, he had never failed to bestow, even while he was himself struggling against the disadvantages of a narrow and precarious income. So well known, indeed, were his almost prodigal charities, while in charge of the Vatican, and his consequent poverty at the time of his nomination to the Cardinalate, that the Pope, Gregory XVI., himself presented him, from the Pontifical establishment, the two state carriages * which form the necessary equipage of a Cardinal in all processions and other occasions of public ceremonial.