keeps hoo-hooing ahead with all his lungs. The firemen fight their own ring clearance at the fires; no police ever helps, but they stand by each other, and are too strong for the mob. They are rewarded in foro conscientiæ citizens fork out according to their consciences. To me, from all I can hear, it is a puzzle how these young men like so much trouble and fag (night and day), payless and almost thankless! They build fine engine-houses, too; the engines alone are very expensive, but their pride is touched-they are an order-fast-military!-bands, balls-belles! flowers and hearts are yielded!-voilà, le pourquoi?

Can one wonder the Americans sent us nothing but utilities in art; all its taste and beauty here (except afloat) is at a very low ebb indeed. Pictures, wretched daubs; a poor, flimsy portrait-painter or two may still with a pick up a few dollars in spite of the daguerreotypes which eye you grim sternness at every window; but all the fine arts are given up to foreigners. French and Germans take the lead in decorations, and all the lighter fashions and elegancies.

No; one must not look for taste of a high order, or the refined elegance in anything, equal to Europe; nor is it at all essential, it will come fast enough, I dare say, when they are less surfeited by the plethora of good living; and when they will have to repine and grumble at the corruptions and anomalies of a more refined state of things.

BEAUTIES OF SICILY.*

LORD PALMERSTON has observed of Sicily, that although a fine island full of natural resources, and inhabited by a highly-gifted people, it is, nevertheless, not large enough to be, in the present state of the world, a really independent country; and were it entirely separated from Naples, it would soon run the risk of becoming an object of contest for foreign influence, and of sinking at last into the condition of satellite to some of the more powerful states of Europe.

It is not so only in the present day, it has always been so. Islanded, and yet in proximity to great continents, varied in configuration, fertile in soil, and lovely in climate, Sicily has been always envied by the dominating powers of the world. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Germans, French, Spaniards, Austrians, and Neapolitans; nay, even the English, have ruled there in succession. The family of Nelson still hold property at Bronte, at the western foot of Etna. Amid such successive invasions, the history and the whereabouts of the Sicilians themselves remains a puzzle for the Aborigines Protection Society.

What is more to our purpose now, is that with these successive conquests, art, science, and poetry have still, ever since the epoch of the

*Pictures from Sicily. By the author of "Forty Days in the Desert." Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co.

Greek colonies, been naturalised on this beautiful island. Then arose those noble temples, the ruins of which still adorn its shores, and which have been succeeded by all that is quaint and characteristic in Saracenic and Norman architecture. With its unequalled scenic advantages superadded to its wealth in art, where is there a country so worthy of panoramic representation as Sicily?

In the time of the Greeks, Syracuse and Agrigentum disputed the palm of excellence. Hiero, King of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum, are both celebrated in the immortal poems of Pindar for their victories at the Olympic games. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, and Archimedes, were among the ornaments of the court of Hiero. Carthage and Rome rather detracted from, than added to, either the prosperity of the people, or the resources of the island. With the decline of the Roman Empire: the rise of Christianity, and the conversion of Sicilian cities into episcopal sees, gave a new direction to art and to intellectual culture, and when the chief cities once more changed masters and became the seats of Mussulman amirs, the same elegant civilisation of the Arabs, the same arts and sciences, the same architecture and husbandry, which adorned the Moorish kingdom in Spain, were transplanted to a soil no less congenial for their development.

Thus, when the iron-clad Norman knights arrived, they found the island already full of the people of all nations, having different laws, language, religion, manners, and customs. These respective differences the Normans had the good sense to leave untouched. Architecture was a favourite pursuit with most of their kings, and hence the strong castles nestled on the summit of the mountains, the stern monasteries, and other rock-secluded ecclesiastical edifices; and, above all, the beautiful palaces that adorn the sea-girt island. Brief as was the career of the Normans in Sicily, it was almost unexampled in brilliancy, and it left behind it, both in the institutions and monuments of the country, magnificent memorials of what it once had been.

From that period to our own day, having no longer a resident king, Sicily has never ceased to experience all the evils arising from a distant monarch and a delegated sway-the invasion of parliamentary privilege -the encroachment of the barons-disregard of all public improvements in roads, edifices, or defences-decline of art and manufactures, industry and commerce, and consequent degradation of the people.

If two prominent points remain then still to attract the stranger to Sicily, it is her truly interesting and remarkable monuments, her unrivalled scenery, and beautiful climate. Who will not be delighted to follow Mr. Bartlett in his pen and pencil illustrations of this most lovely island? It is quite a different thing to travel in such company to that of the ordinary jog-trot unillustrated book of travels. With a good map, an excellent picture, and a clear, if not eloquent description to help us, we have at the onset Messina placed as distinctly before us as if we were on the spot. The character of the country, the town and harbour spread before us, the straits, the town of Reggio, and the snow-tipped Calabrian mountains of the opposite side. What more could be desired?

Then again, Etna, that terrible wonder of Sicily; we have the fiery mountain from half a dozen points of view; not the least interesting that Feb.-VOL. XCVII. NO. CCCLXXXVI.

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from Nicolosi; we have a graphic account of an ascent; a pencil sketch of the well-known Casa Inglese, supposed to be destroyed in the late eruptions; and a journey round the foot of the monster volcano, including descriptions of the massive Norman square keep and Castle of Paterno, exactly like our Rochester and London towers; Bronte, with its convents; and Randazzo, like a town of the middle ages, preserved as a curiosity, with its gloomy walls overhanging a ravine, its Norman churches, and streets of coeval architecture, subsisting almost unaltered to the present day.

The carriage-road from Messina to Catania follows the shores of the Faro, and displays very pleasing scenery all the way. It is, indeed, comparable with the famous Riviera of the Genoese coast, and is hardly less beautiful. Lofty mountains descend to the sea, leaving a narrow view of richly-cultivated plain, sprinkled with towns and villages; while a broad margin of white sand runs along the shore, and masses of rock have fallen into the transparent water. On this part of the coast is one of the few relics of English dominion that are met with amid the motley remains on the island. It is the fort of St. Alessio, which stands upon a bold promontory, commanding a view of Messina on one side, and Taormina on the other.

Insignificant as this latter place is now, it was one of the most ancient and celebrated cities in all Sicily. It was the last place that held out against the Saracens, and it withstood the Normans for six long months. At present the chief relics are the theatre and some beautiful morceaux of Norman architecture, and the view from Taormina is said to be the finest in all Sicily.

"No one," says Mr. Bartlett, "who has seen the sunrise from this glorious spot can ever forget it. Almost at our feet was the immense expanse of murmuring sea; below, the beautiful sweep of the theatre and the broken arches of the proscenium, overhung by tremendous rocks half covered with tufts of cactus-the town upon its beetling precipice -the winding shore, all the way from Syracuse to Messina-with the stupendous mass of Etna towering above everything beside."

Beyond this, the whole line of coast is haunted with classic and poetical associations. First we have Naxos, one of the earliest Greek colonies in Sicily; next, the staircase of Aci, where tradition places the murder of the shepherd by his rival Polyphemus; also the Castle of Aci, beetling over precipitous rocks, the singular cluster of rocky islets called Scopuli Cyclopum, and the port of Ulysses.

Catania, one of the largest and handsomest cities in the island, presents a beautiful appearance with its domes and towers, surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation. Within, however, notwithstanding its numerous churches, monasteries, and charitable institutions, dirt, dilapidation, and neglect of decency and comfort, give an air of shabbiness even to its finest squares and piazzas. Leaving Catania for Syracuse, a rich and fertile, but, nevertheless, melancholy-looking plain, watered by the Simeto, is traversed, as also Lentini, a poor town afflicted with malaria. This is followed by a rough tract, interspersed with a wild growth of oleander and scented myrtle; next the town of Augusta, having a good harbour, but now a lifeless, melancholy place; then the site of Thapsus,

and finally Syracuse itself—the most magnificent of all the Grecian colonies, but now a mere ruin, although ocular proof still remains of the immense extent of the ancient city in the remains of its outer circuit of fortifications. It is, indeed, quite a long ride from the modern town to the extremity of the former city. Tombs cut in the crags, and traces of foundations are seen all around; but hyacinths and wild plants start from the crevices of the cliff, which once was a crowded quarter of the city, and where now no sound arises but that of mules clattering over the stony track. Beyond lies the island of Ortygia, fortified by the Emperor Charles V., and covered by the modern town. On the nearer side the smaller port, and on the further the great harbour, so often the scene of naval conflict. Then again, at the bottom of the latter, the unhealthy valley of the Anapus, and in whose marshy banks still flourishes the papyrus, now only met with on the Nile, south of Khartum. In the neighbourhood are also the latomia, or quarries, from which the ancient city was built, subsequently used as prisons, and which present a series of strikingly picturesque scenes. Connected with these is the great excavation known as the "Ear of Dionysius."

Notwithstanding all its claims to interest, Mr. Bartlett says few will be inclined to protract their stay in so dreary and sickly a place as modern Syracuse beyond a day or two, devoted to the examination of its antiquites. Yet, from hence to Girgenti, there is but a mule path to proceed onwards. The inns are also wretched, abounding in vermin, but destitute of larder or cellar; and the whole interior of the island, except for its natural beauties, appears to be in a deplorable state of filth and misery. Amid such drawbacks to the pleasure of travel, Terranova, where Eschylus met his death by the fall of a tortoise upon his head, nor Alicata, nor Palma, which succeed to it, appear to present any attractions to the traveller. The track is very solitary, and it is but rarely that the passenger falls in with anything but a flock of silken-haired goats, and a shepherd wrapped in his huge brown cloak and sheep-skin leggings. But the wild heaths over which the road passes are fragrant with myrtle; and in the season of spring the whole face of the country is enamelled with hyacinths. Through scenery thus wildly pleasing the traveller, after a long and weary pilgrimage, comes at length in sight of the white walls of Girgenti.

The ancient Agrigentum, proverbial for the luxury and elegance of its citizens, stood in a most noble and happily-chosen situation. The city, and its temples and acropolis, occupied an immense platform, everywhere defended by precipitous rocks, the highest part 1200 feet above the sea, of which, and as well as of all the surrounding country, it commanded a magnificent prospect. What was formerly city is now covered with luxuriant groves of fig, orange, and olive; and the modern town, "as foul and fetid as the face of nature is fair and smiling," occupies what was only acropolis—as is so often the case in the East. Along the edge of the precipice, starting from the Rupe Atenea, the bold and precipitous rock which forms the north-west angle of the site, every here and there are remains of temples of old; some of which, as the temple of Concord, are still almost entire. On the Rupe Atenea alone are remains of two temples-those of Jupiter and Minerva. At the south

east angle, on the commanding brink of the precipice, separated by a short interval, stand two temples of Doric architecture, the nearer dedicated to Juno Lucina, presenting an incomparably picturesque group of columns, some upright and others prostrate, or thrown in wild confusion around; the second, that of Concord, still apparently entire. The combination of these temples with the scenery around them, renders this part of Girgenti almost unique in beauty. "Never, perhaps," says Mr. Bartlett, 66 was there an instance in which the admirable taste of the Greeks in the position of their edifices more remarkaby displayed than here. Art and nature are made mutually to enhance each other. From whatever point we view the temples, they are a glorious adornment of the scene; while the view from them is no less magnificent and commanding, over plains, valleys, and mountains, around whose every outline is romantic, and the distant sea, of a soft and slumberous azure, which expands towards the southern horizon. It is in the midst of such a scene that we may comprehend something of the life of the ancient Greeks, and that intense feeling for beauty which was the predominant element of their existence."

The temple of Concord, suposed to have been erected after the Punic war, stands in lonely beauty near the edge of the rock, silent and forsaken, except by flocks of goats that browse among the odoriferous shrubs. The temple of Jupiter, the most colossal in scale, is now a shapeless heap of ruins. Of the temple of Hercules but a single column is now standing. Of the temple of Esculapius, or Castor and Pollux, there remains but a picturesque fragment of two Doric columns, and a portion of the entablature. Such is a glance at the principal remains of the once splendid and luxurious city.

Sciacca, the birthplace of Agathocles, celebrated for its hot sulphur baths, is now a small port, that exhibits some little bustle. Selinunte (ancient Selinus) is a wide-spread mass of ruins, in which a few pillars alone remain upright amidst a wilderness of fallen blocks. It was destroyed by an earthquake, and the site is given up to utter and awful desolation.

Passing from the south to the north coast, by Castel Vetrano, Salemi, an ancient and picturesque town on the top of a hill, overtopped by the mouldering remains of a medieval castle, and overlooking a wide expanse of corn-covered plains and hills, Calatafimi (Kala, a castle), with its hedges of immense aloes, the traveller comes suddenly upon a most majestic vision-the temple of Segeste, standing in lonely sublimity on a lofty precipice, surrounded by an amphitheatre of craggy mountains, closed in by the graceful peaks of Eryx. "The startling manner," Mr. Bartlett says, "in which we were introduced to this glorious combination of nature and art, produced a most vivid impression, affording another and most striking instance of the manner in which the Greeks placed their edifices, so as to harmonise with, and be heightened by, the grandeur of the surrounding scenery."

The temple of Segeste, simple in form, colossal in its proportions, and complete in its exterior except the roof, is unquestionably the grandest in the whole island. Standing on the brink of a deep prrecipice, and surrounded on all sides with lofty, desolate mountains, with little or no